Sweet Nothings
by Traban16
Summary: He knows that he'll never be the same again. He also knows that he'll never be the puppet of old men and their "games" again, and that is ever better. Voldemort, Dumbledore, Xehanort... Never again will they dominate his existence. Now is the time for Harry to follow his heart, and bring some old acquaintances along for the ride.
1. Misplaced Sentiment

**Chapter 1: Misplaced Sentiment**

* * *

" _I need... more rage... I need more... hearts..."_

 _His foe looked upon him with something akin to pity in his dark brown eyes, "Xemnas... There's more to a heart than just anger or hate. It's full of all kinds of feelings. Don't you remember?"_

 _Sora had always been a bit of a fool. He glared hatefully at the fool for his idiotic words, "Unfortunately... I don't..."_

 _And he faded away then before their very eyes…_

* * *

" _Denizens of Light, answer this: why do you hate the Darkness?" he queried to them as they all stood before him, a proud little rag-tag army of the Light._

 _The small mouse King choose to speak on then, "Aw, we don't hate it. It's just kinda… scary. But the world's made of Light AND Darkness. You can't have one without the other, 'cause Darkness is half of everything. Sorta makes ya wonder why we are scared of the dark…" Mickey finished his words in a trail of thought, looking down in what could have been thoughtful reflection or shame._

 _Riku, however, glared up at Xemnas as he spat out his words, "It's because of who's lurking inside it." And those words had obviously been directed his way. If Xemnas could remember what it was to feel, he supposed he would express the emotion known as sadness. Or perhaps anger. He was not sure which would be more appropriate to the situation._

" _You accept Darkness, yet choose to live in the Light. So why is it that you loathe us who teeter on the edge of nothing? We who were turned away by both light and dark - never given a choice?" Xemnas asked of them, desiring their perspective more than anything at the moment._

" _That's simple!" Riku sneered while Sora and Kairi stood steadfast on both sides of him, "It's because you mess up our worlds!"_

 _Xemnas gave a rather hollow smirk as he retorted, "That may be... however, what other choice might we have had?" and truly he did wonder if something of another path had escaped his vision._

 _But that fool Sora chose to let his temper rise at that so crucial a moment, "Just give it a rest! You're Nobodies! You don't even exist! You're not sad about anything!"_

 _Again Xemnas gave a hollow smirk, but this time an empty laughter echoed along with it as he gazed down upon the forces of Light, "Very good. You don't miss a thing. I cannot feel... sorrow... No matter what misery befalls the worlds. No matter what you think, what you feel, or how you exist."_

* * *

" _Hearts are power." He intoned, building his energies, "Nothingness is eternal!"_

" _Hear me Kingdom Hearts," he bellowed up to the supreme mass of hearts as they fell away one heart at a time, "it seems we must begin anew. Ah, but know this. I will give to you as many hearts as it takes. Mark my words! You can no longer be complete without me than I without you. Heed me Kingdom Hearts! Lend me your power so we may be complete! The power to erase the fools that hinder us."_

* * *

" _Riku," he called out as the boy attempted to break past his barrier, "are you sure you're not jealous of Sora?"_

" _Sora," he crowed with mocking concern while the adolescent clashed the Oathkeeper keyblade against his Eternal Blades, "are you sure you can trust Riku?"_

* * *

 _In their final confrontation, Xemnas presented himself to them with a flicker of the emotion he had so long ago forgotten, "Heroes from The Realm of Light, I will not allow it to end this way - not yet. If Light and Darkness are eternal, surely we Nothings are the same! Eternal!"_

 _Riku gave a rather casual shrug of his shoulder while twirling his latest keyblade, the Way to Dawn, in his other hand, "You're right. Light and Darkness are eternal. Nothing probably goes on forever, too. But, guess what Xemnas?"_

 _Sora smirked as he stepped forward, his keyblade morphing into what Xemnas recognized as the Oblivion keyblade. Xemnas found that to be Sora's way of showing both irony and foreshadowing without a single syllable passing his lips. It was very tongue in cheek of the boy, which he thought to be extremely uncharacteristic of him._

" _That doesn't mean YOU'RE eternal!" Sora shouted, pointing Oblivion straight at Xemnas, or to be more specific, at where Xemnas' heart would have been if he had one._

 _He couldn't feel it. For the second time in many years, Xemnas felt the flicker of yet another emotion. This one being humor. He laughed, truly laughed for the first time in oh so many years, "No more eternal than that radiance of yours..."_

 _And as he met his demise, Xemnas only had two words for that which gleamed in light, mocking his defeat with its sheer existence where he had not been allowed to exist, "Accursed... Keyblade..."_

* * *

And then the world around him exploded into a sea of whites and blacks, Light and Darkness swirling and whirling, but never once meeting to form any one shade of grey or silver.

And with a start, the now former Superior of the In-Between, former Xehanort's Nobody via the fourth Xehanort's body, Rank I within Organization XIII and the ruler of The World That Never Was woke with a start as Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and soon to be Fourth-Year Hogwarts Student.

Harry was left breathing hard and fast as he awoke from the reoccurring dream. He flopped back onto his bed, his body sprawled out as though he just dropped from having won a race against a professional athlete.

The dreams were getting more and more vivid as the days went by in Number Four along Privet Drive. Harry knew that after this latest one, he could no longer ignore them.

Especially when he had just seen himself die at the hands of two boys not unlike he was now.

Yes, he could no longer ignore that in his course of fate, or perhaps a past life, he had been Xemnas, leader of Organization XIII. Harry Potter had been the Superior of the In-Between. The Boy-Who-Lived had once been a literal Nobody, and ruler of a World That Never Was.

And better yet, he had been a villain, one who nearly succeeded in orchestrating the end of days if not for the timely intervention of a disparate group of heroes.

Two boys, to be more exact… Two boys who were almost just as Harry was in his bed now…

Harry lay flat on his back with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot poker to his skin. The only other thing that got such a reaction out of his scar was his other reoccurring dream of Voldemort's activities within the house Harry could never identify. That meant that these dreams of past were just as real as the threat of Voldemort.

Harry heaved a heavy sigh as he sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other reaching out in the darkness for his glasses. He found them along on the bedside table, putting them on as his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window. Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful, but the pain was quickly fading as it normally did when the dreams of his life as Xemnas came and went. The dreams of Voldemort always felt worse and the pain lingered like a taunt from the Dark Lord himself. Harry turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A lanky lean boy of fourteen years of age looked back at him, emerald green eyes bright with the new light under his untidy black hair.

Harry turned away from his reflection as he could still clearly see a flicker of Xemnas' image in his own. The dark haughty eyes which felt neither warm nor remorse. The drawn expression which allowed only the barest of emotions to pass over as he faked them so expertly. The silvery white hair which spiked outward in an unkempt manner.

So different, Harry shook his head, but that had been him.

He walked over to the curtains, drawing them back to survey the street below.

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains to the other houses were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.

And yet… and yet…

Harry went restlessly back to the bed. He could not explain these weird dreams or sensations that were overcoming him, slowly driving him to insanity. And now, as he had been staring out into the street, it was almost like he could smell people he could not see. People, he was sure, were not even there. He sat down on the bed, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn't the pain that bothered him; Harry was no stranger to pain and injury. He had lost all the bones from his right arm once and had them painfully regrown within the same day. The same arm had been pierced by a venomous foot-long fang not long afterward. Only last year Harry had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick. He was used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had a knack for attracting half as much trouble as Harry did.

No, the thing that was bothering Harry was the persistent dreams and visions. They were driving him mad with their possible meanings and happenings. On one hand, he could no longer be ignorant to the fact that he was in fact Xemnas of the In-Between. That much even Harry could see. But the things the dreams were doing to him.

Last week he had stumbled off into a ditch while walking, only to fall into a literal puddle of darkness that dropped him into his Aunt Petunia's garden. Yesterday he had been arguing with Dudley, and had pointed a finger at the boy, shooting off a red beam of light that Dudley accused Harry of using a laser-pointer in broad daylight. Harry had of course went along with the ridiculous claim, but found that he could reproduce the effect with a certain degree of concentration. The better part of it was that the Ministry of Magic had not shown up at his doorstep or sent a single notice for his use of Underage Sorcery, so he celebrated in finding a magic they could not trace back to him.

And just a moment ago Harry could have sworn with his right hand to Kingdom Hearts that he smelt someone hiding in the bushes across the street, watching the Dursley household like a guardian dog or something.

Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half-expecting to hear the creak of a stair or the swish of a cloak? For someone to rush up to his room as he came to the conclusion that he was slowly but surely regaining the powers and abilities he had once wielded as the great and terrible Xemnas, Master of all Nobodies? To have Dumbledore sit down with him over tea and explain that Xemnas was not so bad, and that what Harry was going through was as normal as being a teenage wizard living in a house with three magic-hating muggles?

And at that thought, Harry jumped slightly as he heard his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room over through thin walls. Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid. There was no one to help him through this. No one of any importance that could shed some light on his Nothingness. No one in the house with him except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley, and they were plainly still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless.

Accursed fools, Harry thought with a dark scowl forming slowly on his lips. He shook himself once more, feeling the thought was too hateful to be from him. He did not like his relatives, but he did not hate them either. He would leave them in a heartbeat for any other place, but he would never wish permanent harm onto them.

That was Xemnas, but Harry had a heart; both literally and figuratively. Harry Potter would never be so cruel.

Turning himself slightly, Harry also turned his thoughts to more positive matters. At the end of this summer, he would be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts, and Harry was already counting the days until he would be back at the castle again. But there was still a fortnight to go before he went back to school. He smiled softly as his gaze landed upon the stack of birthday cards his two best friends had sent him at the end of July. What would they say if Harry wrote to them and told them about his scar hurting and his dreams of His former life as Xemnas?

At once, Hermione Granger's voice seemed to fill his head as she would focus on the scar part and glare at him for the past life part, knowing the girl's rather adverse history with such nonsense as Divination. It was her worried tone that he mused over, shrill and panicky.

Almost as soon after did the voice of Zexion berate, detached with stark and brutal honesty as he would be told to focus more on things that truly mattered and not over some ridiculous scar. Harry could, however, see the boy's face perk with minuscule interest at the mention of a former life. He too, however, would laugh Harry off as a nutcase.

Then came the image of Ron, Harry's other best friend besides Hermione. Harry smiled in amusement as red hair and a long-nosed, freckled face seemed to swim before his mind's eye, wearing a bemused expression. Ron would not have a single clue on what to do, but would always know when a problem was too great for him to tackle alone. Ron would defer the matter to his dad, Arthur Weasley. Mr. Weasley was a fully qualified wizard who worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, but he didn't have any particular expertise in the matter of curses, as far as Harry knew.

In any case, Harry didn't like the idea of the whole Weasley family knowing that he was getting jumpy about this whole experience when there was the slightest possibility it could be just as common as puberty in the Wizarding community. Ron's mum, Molly Weasley would fuss worse than Hermione. Fred and George, Ron's older twin brothers, might think Harry was losing his grip on reality, or that he was slowly becoming muggle if it really was a common occurrence.

The Weasleys were Harry's favorite family in the world; he was hoping that they might invite him to stay any time now. Ron had mentioned something about the Quidditch World Cup, and he somehow didn't want his visit punctuated with anxious inquiries about his scar. Harry gave a long sigh and flopped once again onto his bed.

Yes, thought Harry, it would all be alright. There was no point telling anyone the dreams and visions. He was not too worried himself even, as he was more worried about what other people would say if he told them. A part of him, small and steadily growing, called his concern for the opinions of others foolish and pathetic. Harry told that part of him to shut up and go bugger a hag elsewhere. Then he got to his feet, stretched, and opened his wardrobe once more. Without glancing at his eerie reflection, seeing himself inside the image of Xemnas more prominently than ever, Harry started to get dressed before going down to breakfast.

At least that would be a normal affair in the Dursley household.

Well, at least hopefully…


	2. Lingering Empathy

**Chapter 2: Lingering Empathy**

* * *

By twelve o'clock the next day, Harry had effectively gotten over his existential crisis of having a past life with the news that he would be going to the Weasleys earlier than expected and that he would be attending the Quidditch World Cup with them as well. All thoughts on whether or not he was going crazy by accepting the part of him that had once been the Superior of the In-Between were gone as his school trunk was packed with his school things and all his most prized possessions. The Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father was at the very top, covering up the top of the line Firebolt broomstick he had gotten from his godfather Sirius Black, and safely tucked away into an easy to reach corner was the enchanted map of Hogwarts he had been gifted by Fred and George last year.

Harry had emptied his hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food, double checked every nook and cranny of his bedroom for forgotten spellbooks or quills, and taken down the chart on the wall counting down the days to September the First, on which he liked to cross off the days remaining until his return to Hogwarts with the sigil of the Nobodies. The atmosphere inside Number Four, Privet Drive was extremely tense, but Harry found himself caring less and less as the hours wore on. The imminent arrival at their house of an assortment of wizards was making the Dursleys uptight and irritable. Uncle Vernon had looked downright alarmed when Harry had informed him, in a detached tone of voice that would do his past life proud, that the Weasleys would be arriving at five o'clock the very next day.

"I hope you told them to dress properly, these people," Uncle Vernon snarled at once, "I've seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They'd better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that's all."

"Do not fret, uncle," Harry said with the barest of smirks, felt a slight sense of enjoyable foreboding, "They shall come better dressed than yourself." And with those words, Harry turned and walked away while his uncle puzzled out what exactly he meant by those words.

When Harry returned from his room again, he found his Uncle Vernon dressed in his best suit. To some people, this might have looked like a gesture of welcome, but Harry knew better. This was his dear uncle's way of appearing impressive and intimidating.

It was laughable, especially when Harry considered that the Weasleys would not likely get the unspoken gesture. That, and the fact that Mr. Weasley would likely end up poking at the crisp suit in order to probe its functions.

Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. This was not because the diet he had been on was at last taking effect. No, this was due to fright. Dudley had emerged from his last encounter with a fully grown wizard with a curly pig's tail poking out from his tailbone. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had had to pay for its removal at a private hospital in London. It wasn't altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy.

Harry carefully hid his sniggering at that, but eventually had to run up to his room and secure a pillow so to hold back the volume of his uproarious laughter.

Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn't even protest at the food placed in front of him, which happened to be a generous helping of cottage cheese and grated celery. Aunt Petunia wasn't eating anything at all. Her arms were folded, her lips were pursed, and she seemed to be chewing her tongue for a light snack as though biting back the furious diatribe she longed to throw at Harry.

"They'll be driving, of course?" Uncle Vernon barked across the table at Harry, who slid his sober gaze toward his uncle.

"I would hope so," Harry drawled while Uncle Vernon snorted into his mustache.

Normally, Uncle Vernon would have asked what car Mr. Weasley drove; he tended to judge other men by how big and expensive their cars were. But, Harry doubted whether Uncle Vernon would have taken to Mr. Weasley even if he drove a Ferrari.

Harry spent most of the afternoon in his bedroom. He found it rather distasteful how his Aunt Petunia peered out through the net curtains every few seconds, as though there had been a warning about an escaped rhinoceros from the zoo. The part of him that was Xemnas came on strong with thoughts of sending his precious aunt to live a single day in Wonderland, but Harry only entertained the thought and stopped himself before Aunt Petunia saw the Door to Darkness he had poised behind her in order to push her in.

Finally, at a quarter to five, Harry went back downstairs and into the living room. Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions. Uncle Vernon was pretending to read the paper, but his tiny eyes were not moving, and Harry was sure he was really listening with all his might for the sound of an approaching car. Dudley was crammed into an armchair, his porky hands beneath him, clamped firmly around his buttocks. Harry sat in the thick of this tension, but couldn't take it as it made him growl mentally with distain. He left the room and went sat on the stairs in the hall, his eyes on his watch. The numbers reminded him of his Organization XIII, and he ticked off every minute with the member who corresponded to that number.

He was one, Xemnas, Superior of the In-Between and Master of Nothing.

Two was his oldest friend, Xigbar, the Freeshooter, Nobody of Braig, and the Sniper of Space.

Three was Xaldin, the Whirlwind Lancer, Nobody of Dilan, and Six Lances of the Wind.

Four was Vexen, the Chilly Academic, Nobody to Even, and the Scholar of Ice.

Five was the ever solid Lexaeus, the Taciturn Stalwart, Nobody of Aeleus, and the Muscle of Earth.

Six was the pleasantly detached Zexion, the Cloaked Schemer, Nobody of Ienzo, and Author of Illusion.

Seven had been his ever-faithful and Second-in-Command, Saïx, the Luna Diviner, Nobody to Isa, and Medium to the Moon.

Eight had been that hot-head Axel, the Flurry of Dancing Flames, Nobody to Lea, and the Impulse of Fire.

Nine was the lackadaisical Demyx, the Melodious Nocturne, Nobody of… actually, Harry paused as the minute ticked away. He was not sure what Demyx's original persona had been as he had never cared much to ask or remember. Demyx was just so forgettable to both Harry and Xemnas that he eventually shrugged and continued on, naming the blond boy as the Poet of Water.

Then there was Luxord, their tenth member. He was known to them as the Gambler of Fate, Nobody to… Harry blinked as he again found himself stumped as to who another member had been when they were Somebodies before becoming Nobodies. All Harry could remember of Luxord was that the man was their Dealer of Time.

The eleventh member made Harry scowl darkly and furiously. Marluxia, the Graceful Assassin. One who Harry could do well without, less he be stabbed in the back again by the arrogant man. He didn't even care to recall the Somebody he had crawled out from, and wished hard that he had been the one to kill that sneaky little pest for his traitorous nature. The Flower of Betrayal was most befitting, indeed…

And as the minute hand ticked onto twelve, Harry scowled harshly as his thoughts landed on Larxene, the Savage Nymph. A woman just as vile as Marluxia, she too had been one of the traitors to die within Castle Oblivion. The Callous Vixen of Lightning was a well-rewarded title for her.

Lastly, as Harry found his mood darkening even more on their last member, was Roxas, the final member to their organization. The foolish Nobody of the even more accursed Sora. Harry was glad there was not a minute that represented the boy, or else Harry might have ended up without a watch, feeding it to a pool of darkness in his fury. The Key of Destiny, he had personally named the boy. The Harbinger of Light. Harry placed his face in his hands. Why was it that the final three members had been such major letdowns when he had thought they would be such key additions? Ugh, it made Harry sick to his stomach to even think about.

A small trembling black hole opened in front of Harry, with his ripping away his watch and chucking it into the darkness which swallowed it whole before disappearing under his power just as suddenly it came.

* * *

Harry jumped slightly when Uncle Vernon came jiggling up to the front door, perspiring slightly in his suit. He threw open the front door, peered up and down the street, then withdrew his head quickly.

"They're late!" he snarled at Harry, who blinked as he realized that by his minute counting, five o'clock had come and gone.

"I can tell," Harry said, barely parting his lips as the words were spoken, "Maybe they've hit a snag of bad traffic, or something."

At half past, Harry was starting to feel anxious himself. He could hear Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia conversing in terse mutters in the living room.

"No consideration at all." Aunt Petunia sniffed, probably holding her nose high in the air.

"We might've had an engagement." Uncle Vernon jeered, most likely wriggling his moustache.

"Maybe they think they'll get invited to dinner if they're late."

"Well, they most certainly won't be," Uncle Vernon stated flat out, and Harry heard him stand up pacing the living room floor, "They'll take the boy and go, there'll be no hanging around. That's if they're coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don't set much store by punctuality. Either that or they drive some tin-pot car that's broken down—AAAAAAARRRRRGH!"

Harry jumped up from his spot on the stairs. From the other side of the living room door came the sounds of the three Dursleys scrambling, panic-stricken, across the room. The next moment saw Dudley flying into the hall, looking terrified.

"What happened?" Harry asked him calmly, "What's the matter?"

But Dudley didn't seem able to speak. Hands still clamped over his buttocks, he waddled as fast as he could into the kitchen.

Harry shook his head before he hurried into the living room. Loud hangings and scrapings were coming from behind the Dursleys' boarded-up fireplace, which had a fake coal fire plugged in front of it.

"What is it?" Aunt Petunia gasped with fright. She was backed into the wall and was staring, terrified, toward the fire. "What is it, Vernon?" But they were left in doubt barely a second longer. Voices could be heard from inside the blocked fireplace.

"Ouch! Fred, no — go back, go back, there's been some kind of mistake. Tell George not to — OUCH! George, no, there's no room, go back quickly and tell Ron —"

"Maybe Harry can hear us, Dad. Maybe he'll be able to let us out —"

There was a loud hammering of fists on the boards behind the electric fire.

"Harry? Harry, can you hear us?" the Dursleys rounded on Harry like a pair of angry wolverines. He did not notice their angry stares as his attention was focused too keenly on the fireplace.

"What is this?" Uncle Vernon growled, his fists clenching at the sides of his best suit, "What's going on?"

"They… They've tried to get here by Floo powder," Harry said through the desire to laugh like a nutter in the loony bin, "They can travel by fireplace. Only, you've blocked the fireplace." he informed his uncle while approaching the hearth, "Hang on."

"Mr. Weasley? Can you hear me?" Harry called through the boards. The hammering stopped.

Somebody inside the chimney piece said, "Shh!"

"Mr. Weasley, this is Harry. The fireplace has been boarded up. You won't be able to get through there."

"Damn!" Mr. Weasley's voice swore, "What in the name of Merlin did they want to block up the fireplace for?"

"They have an electric fire," Harry explained with a grin overcoming his face, because surely he knew Mr. Weasley's reaction to that statement.

"Really?" said Mr. Weasley's voice excitedly. "Eclectic, you say? With a plug? Gracious, I must see that… Let's think… Ouch, Ron!"

Ron's voice now joined the others in the hearth, "What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?"

"Oh no, Ron," came Fred's voice, very sarcastically, "No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up."

"Yeah, we're having the time of our lives here," George said now, his voice sounded muffled though, like he was squashed against the wall or something.

"Boys, boys . . ." Mr. Weasley voiced vaguely, "I'm trying to think what to do… Yes… Only way… Stand back, Harry."

Harry sighed before unplugging the electric fire and retreating to the sofa.

Uncle Vernon, however, moved forward like a territorial walrus, "Wait a moment!" he bellowed at the fire. "What exactly are you going to—?"

 _ **BANG**_!

The boarded-up fireplace burst outward, expelling Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, and Ron in a cloud of rubble and loose chippings. Aunt Petunia shrieked and fell backward over the coffee table; Uncle Vernon caught her before she hit the floor, and gaped, speechless, at the Weasleys, all of whom had bright red hair, including Fred and George, who were identical to their very last freckle.

"That's better," Mr. Weasley panted through the dim, brushing dust from his long green robes and straightening his glasses, "Ah!" he moved toward Uncle Vernon, his hand outstretched, "you must be Harry's aunt and uncle!"

Tall, thin, and balding, he smiled pleasantly at the great plump man, but Vernon backed away several paces, dragging Petunia with him. Words utterly failed Uncle Vernon, his best suit covered in white dust, which had settled in his hair and mustache. It made him look as though he had just aged thirty years in the last thirty seconds.

"Er… Yes, sorry about that," Mr. Weasley lowered his hand and looked over his shoulder at the destroyed fireplace, "It's all my fault. It just didn't occur to me that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see. Just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking, but I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate."

Harry was ready to bet that the Dursleys hadn't understood a single word of the man's ramblings. They were still gaping at Mr. Weasley, thunderstruck. Aunt Petunia staggered upright again and hid behind Uncle Vernon.

"Hello, Harry!" Mr. Weasley greeted brightly, turning his smile and handshake to Harry, who happily accepted it, "Got your trunk ready?"

"It's upstairs," Harry answered, grinning back at him.

"We'll get it," Fred announced at once, winking at Harry as he and George left the room. They knew where Harry's bedroom was, having once rescued him from it in the dead of night. Harry suspected that Fred and George were hoping for a glimpse of Dudley.

After all, they had heard _a lot_ about him from Harry.

"Well," Mr. Weasley began again, swinging his arms slightly. He was trying to find words to break the very nasty silence. "Very, erm… very nice place you've got here."

As the usually spotless living room was now covered in dust and bits of brick, this remark didn't go down too well with the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon's face purpled once more, and Aunt Petunia started chewing her tongue again. However, they seemed too scared to actually say anything.

Mr. Weasley was looking around now, his eyes seeming to dart in every direction. He loved everything to do with Muggles. Harry could see him itching to go and examine the television and the video recorder.

"They run off eckeltricity, do they?" he said knowledgeably, puffing out his chest a bit, "Ah yes, I can see the plugs. I collect plugs," he added to Uncle Vernon, like a man talking about what sort of car he drove, "And batteries. Got a very large collection of batteries. My wife thinks I'm mad, but there you are."

Uncle Vernon clearly thought Mr. Weasley was mad, too. He moved ever so slightly to the right, screening Aunt Petunia from view, as though he thought Mr. Weasley might suddenly run at them and attack.

Dudley suddenly reappeared in the room. Harry could hear the clunk of his trunk on the stairs, and knew that the sounds must have scared the meaty boy out of hiding in the kitchen. Dudley edged along the wall, gazing at Mr. Weasley with terrified eyes, and attempted to conceal himself behind his mother and father. Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon's bulk, while sufficient to hide bony Aunt Petunia, was nowhere near enough to conceal Dudley.

"Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?" Mr. Weasley smiled, taking another brave stab at making conversation.

"Yes," Harry, "that is Dudley." he exchanged quick glances with Ron, the temptation to burst out into laughter was almost overwhelming at this point for both of them.

Dudley was still clutching his bottom as though afraid it might fall off. Mr. Weasley, however, seemed genuinely concerned at Dudley's peculiar behavior. Indeed, from the tone of his voice when he next spoke, Harry was quite sure that Mr. Weasley thought Dudley was quite as mad as the Dursleys thought he was, except that Mr. Weasley felt sympathy rather than fear.

"Having a good holiday, Dudley?" Mr. Weasley asked kindly.

Dudley whimpered. Harry saw his cousin's hands tighten still harder over his massive backside.

Fred and George came back into the room carrying Harry's school trunk. They glanced around as they entered and spotted Dudley. Their faces cracked into identical vicious grins.

"Alright," Mr. Weasley said, pushing up the sleeves of his robes, "better get cracking then." he took out his wand, and Harry saw the Dursleys draw back against the wall as one.

" _ **Incendio**_!" Mr. Weasley intoned, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him. Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. The head of Weasley family took a small drawstring bag from his pocket. He untied it and took a pinch of the powder inside before he threw the pinch of powder onto the flames. The flames reared up, turning emerald green and roared higher than ever.

"Off you go then, Fred," Mr. Weasley said as he cast a look back at his present oldest son.

"Coming," Fred said, then something spilled ut from his pocket as he stepped over a chunk of splintered wood, "Oh no — hang on." It was a bag of sweets, and now the contents were rolling in every direction. Harry observed in silence as Fred scrambled around on the floor chasing after big, fat toffees in brightly colored wrappers. The teen crammed them back into his pocket, then gave the Dursleys a cheery wave.

"The Burrow!" he said clearly, stepping forward, and walking right into the fire.

Aunt Petunia gave a little shuddering gasp.

There was a whooshing sound, and Fred vanished.

"Right then, George," Mr. Weasley said, pointing down at Harry's luggage, "you and the trunk." Harry helped George carry the trunk forward into the flames and turn it onto its end so that he could hold it better.

Then, with a second whoosh, George had cried "the Burrow!" and vanished too.

"Ron, you next."

"See ya!" Ron said brightly to the Dursleys. He grinned broadly at Harry, then stepped into the fire, "The Burrow!" he shouted and disappeared.

Now Harry and Mr. Weasley alone remained.

Harry moved toward the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr. Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at Harry with a stern frown.

"Harry, surely you'll say good-bye to them?" the man said with mild bemusement, but Harry could not fault him for it. He did not know the history between Harry and these people he was forced to call his last living relatives.

"Good-bye," Harry said, trying hard to keep the sneer from showing in his tone.

Now Mr. Weasley swung around to stare at the Dursleys in amazement.

"Harry said good-bye to you," he said while gazing at them, "Didn't you hear him?"

"It matters not," Harry muttered to Mr. Weasley, "Quite honestly, I care little for pleasantries at the moment."

"But they still matter, Harry," Mr. Weasley said without even a twitch, almost as if he had to remind his sons of such every day. Percy probably, more than the others.

Still, the Weasley patriarch did not remove his hand from Harry's shoulder as he addressed the Dursleys, "You aren't going to see your nephew till next summer," he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. "Surely you're going to say good-bye?"

Uncle Vernon's face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. But his beady eyes darted on the wand which Mr. Weasley's held loftily in his hand still.

"Good-bye, then." Vernon breathed with much resentment in his tone.

"See you," Harry spat dully, putting one foot forward into the green flames, which felt pleasantly like warm breath.

At that moment, however, a horrible gagging sound erupted behind him, and Aunt Petunia started to scream.

Harry wheeled around in annoyance. Dudley was no longer standing behind his parents. He was kneeling beside the coffee table, and he was gagging and sputtering on a foot-long, purple, slimy thing that was protruding from his mouth. One bewildered second later, Harry groaned in irritation as he realized that the foot-long thing was in actuality Dudley's tongue, and that a brightly colored toffee wrapper lay on the floor beside him.

"You accursed fool…" Harry muttered as he turned completely to the situation at hand in huffy displeasure. Things had actually appeared to be progressing without much fuss until this.

It figures…

Aunt Petunia hurled herself onto the ground beside Dudley, her knee on the candy wrapper. She seized the end of her precious son's swollen tongue, and attempted to wrench it out of his mouth. Unsurprisingly, Dudley yelled and sputtered worse than ever, trying to fight her off. Uncle Vernon was bellowing and waving his arms around, and Mr. Weasley had to shout to make himself heard.

"Not to worry, I can sort him out!" he yelled, advancing on Dudley with his wand outstretched, but Aunt Petunia screamed worse than ever and threw herself on top of Dudley, shielding him from Mr. Weasley.

"No, really!" the man said desperately, "It's a simple process. It was the toffee. My son, Fred, real practical joker that one and his twin, George — but it's only an Engorgement Charm! At least… I think it is… Please, I can correct it —"

But far from being reassured, the Dursleys became more panic- stricken; Aunt Petunia was sobbing hysterically, tugging Dudley's tongue as though determined to rip it out; Dudley appeared to be suffocating under the combined pressure of his mother and his tongue; and Uncle Vernon, who had lost control completely, seized a china figure from on top of the sideboard and threw it very hard at Mr. Weasley, who ducked. Harry caught the figure and placed it aside when it flew at his head.

"Now really!" the normally calm family man was now brandishing his wand angrily, "I'm trying to _help_ you!"

Harry had, by now, seen enough and was thoroughly irritated by the whole fuss, "Just remedy this whole mess and catch up, sir."

Harry turned away and toward the fire just as Uncle Vernon bellowed like a wounded hippo, and s snatched up another ornament.

"Right then," Mr. Weasley shouted, his wand on Uncle Vernon, "I'll sort this out! See you at the Burrow, Harry. Tell Molly what's keeping me!"

Harry did not bother with a response as he stepped into the fire, Uncle Vernon's second ornament narrowly missing his left ear.

"The Burrow!" he said calmly through the dim of noise and panicked cries. His last glimpse of the living room was of Mr. Weasley blasting a third ornament out of Uncle Vernon's hand with his wand, Aunt Petunia screaming and lying on top of Dudley, and Dudley's tongue lolling around like a great slimy python.

But next moment Harry had begun to spin very fast, and the Dursleys' living room was whipped out of sight in a rush of emerald-green flames.

Harry spun faster and faster, elbows tucked tightly to his sides, blurred fireplaces flashing past him, until he started to feel sick and closed his eyes. He much preferred travel through the Corridors of Darkness. It was like a simple walk through a dank hallway. No muss, no fuss. This method was nauseating and unrefined for his tastes. The Corridors of Darkness were unpredictable pathways, yes, but only to those that were novice in their use. As a master of Nothingness, Harry had used them extensively back when he was Xemnas. They interlinked the worlds, and were commonly used by all manner of Heartless, not to mention others who preferred them to Gummi travel. The only down side to it all was that a normal person would find them unsafe to use for travel. That being said, weaklings with weak hearts would easily find themselves corrupted at any measure of rated speed by the constant use of the corridors. They would slowly but surely corrupt the weak at heart. Back then, Harry did not possess a heart, and so could not be corrupted by the corridors. Now, he had at once been so use to its effects that he was hardly fazed at all by it.

And he surely liked it better than Floo travel, at any rate…

* * *

When at last Harry felt himself slowing down, he began to move his feet forward. He came walking out of the fireplace with a disoriented expression, throwing out a hand to the nearest furnishing in order to prevent himself from falling face forward to the floor.

"Did he eat it?" Fred questioned excitedly, holding out a hand to help Harry steady himself.

"Yes, the intolerable fool did," Harry replied dryly with the barest upward quirk on his lips as he straightened himself up, "What was it?" he cast a pointed look at Fred, but it was George who answered.

"Ton-Tongue Toffee," George answered brightly, "Fred and me invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer…" The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter; Harry looked around and saw that Ron was sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with two red-haired people Harry had never seen before, though he knew immediately who they had to be.

Bill and Charlie, the two eldest Weasley brothers.

"How're you doing, Harry?" said the nearer of the two, grinning at him and holding out a large hand, which Harry shook, feeling calluses and blisters under his fingers. This one had to be Charlie, who worked with dragons in Romania.

Charlie was built like the twins, shorter and stockier than Percy and Ron, who were both long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned. His arms were muscular, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it.

Bill got to his feet, smiling, and also shook Harry's hand.

Bill came as something of a surprise. Harry knew that he worked for the Wizarding bank, Gringotts, and that Bill had been Head Boy at Hogwarts; Harry had always imagined Bill to be an older version of Percy: fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around. However, Bill was — and there was no other word for it — cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill's clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that Harry recognized his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide.

Before any of them could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr. Weasley appeared out of thin air at George's shoulder. He was looking angrier than Harry had ever seen him.

"That was _not_ in the least bit funny, Fred!" the man shouted, "What in Merlin's name did you give that muggle boy?"

"I didn't _give_ him anything," Fred defended, with another evil grin, "I just _dropped_ it. It was his fault he went and ate it, the great pig. I never told him to."

"YOU DROPPED IT ON PURPOSE!" Mr. Weasley roared as Harry never heard him this loud before, "You knew he'd eat it, you knew he was on a diet —"

"How big did his tongue get?" George asked eagerly.

"It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!"

Harry and the Weasleys roared with laughter again.

" _IT ISN'T FUNNY_!" Mr. Weasley shouted, gripping at the air as if he wanted to bend one of the twins over his knee, "That sort of behavior seriously undermines Wizard–Muggle Relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons—"

"Oi now, we didn't give it to him because he's Muggle!" Fred shot back indignantly.

"Yeah, no, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git," George crossed his arms and turned to Harry, "Isn't he, Harry?"

"Yes, this is true," Harry was still greatly amusing himself with the image of Dudley's swollen tongue. Now that he was away from all the noise and yelling, he found the whole situation more amusing than anything else.

"THAT IS _NOT_ THE POINT!" Mr. Weasley raged on, then pointed a threatening finger toward the twins, "You wait until I tell your _mother_ —"

"Tell me what?" called a voice behind them. Mrs. Weasley had just entered the kitchen. She was a short, plump woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were presently narrowed with suspicion. "Oh hello, Harry, dear," she said, spotting him and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband, losing their warmth and glittering dangerously, "Tell me what, Arthur?"

Mr. Weasley hesitated. Harry could tell that, however angry he was with Fred and George, he hadn't really intended to tell his wife what had happened. There was a silence, while Mr. Weasley eyed his wife nervously.

Then two girls appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs. Weasley. One was Harry's and Ron's friend, Hermione Granger, with her very bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth. The other was Ron's younger sister and the baby of the Weasley family, Ginny, who was small and red-haired just like all of her siblings. Both of them smiled at Harry, who grinned back, which made Ginny go scarlet. She had been very taken with Harry ever since his first visit to the Burrow.

"Tell me what, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley repeated in a threatening tone that made even Harry stand up straighter. He could have probably used a mother hen like her back in the old days of his Organization XIII. Then maybe those swine Marluxia and Larxene would not have betrayed him, and Roxas would have been kept toeing the line.

"It's nothing, Molly," mumbled Mr. Weasley, "Fred and George just — but I've had words with them—"

"What have they done this time?" Mrs. Weasley asked, "If it's got anything to do with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes—"

"Why don't you show Harry where he's sleeping, Ron?" Hermione said from the doorway.

"He knows where he's sleeping," Ron said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "He'll be up in my room. He slept there last sum—"

"We can all go," Hermione spat pointedly, and that bickered no argument when Ron saw the look she was giving him.

"Oh, right." Ron ducked his head he caught on.

"Yeah, we'll come too," George said, tugging on Fred's shirt.

"YOU TWO STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!" Mrs. Weasley snarled.

Truly this woman would have had Marluxia and Larxene whipped into submission with just the fury Harry saw in her eyes as he and Ron edged out of the kitchen. They would soon followed by Hermione and Ginny, setting off along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zigzagged through the house to the upper stories.

"What is Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?" Harry asked as they climbed up the stairs. Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione perched her lips thinly in silence.

"Mum found this stack of order forms when she was cleaning Fred and George's room," Ron told him quietly, "Great long price lists for stuff they've invented. Joke stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I never knew they'd been inventing all that."

"We've been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things," Ginny explained, "We thought they just liked the noise."

"Only, most of the stuff — well, all of it, really — was a bit dangerous," Ron looked like he did not think so, "and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went roaring at them. Told them they weren't allowed to make any more of it, and burned all the order forms… She's furious at them anyway. They didn't get as many O.W.L.s as she expected."

O.W.L.s were Ordinary Wizarding Levels, the examinations Hogwarts students took at the age of fifteen.

"And then there was this big row," Ginny once again filled in the more important details, "because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop."

Just then a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression.

"Hello, Percy," Harry greeted casually through the awkward silence that quickly engulfed their conversation.

"Oh hello, Harry," Percy said back with a nod of his head, "I was wondering who was making all the noise. I'm trying to work in here, you know. I've got a report to finish for the office, you see, and it's rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs at all times during the day."

"We're not _thundering_ ," Ron snapped irritably, crossing his arms, "We're walking. Sorry if we've disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic."

"What are you working on, if you don't mind my asking?" Harry inquired, knowing that Percy would be less pleasant if he did not ask. People like Percy were easy to manipulate when you falsely stroked their egos.

It had been one of the reasons he allowed Marluxia control of Castle Oblivion so long ago. That had been the right move, but he had underestimated Marluxia's greed and egoistically arrogant nature.

"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," Percy began smugly whilst Harry refrained from rolling his eyes as he could sense the rather long explanation ahead, "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin. Leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year—"

"That'll change the world, that report will," Ron said with a nod of his head, "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."

Percy went slightly pink.

"You might sneer, Ron," the pompous boy said heatedly, "but unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products that seriously endanger—"

"Yes well," Harry interrupted, pushing Ron onward. He was once again underestimating something; Percy's pride in his work, "we'll let you get back to righting such wrongs. Your promptness is your grace, after all." they started off up the stairs again, and not a moment later did Percy slam his bedroom door shut. As Harry, Hermione, and Ginny followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them.

It sounded as though Mr. Weasley had finally gotten around to telling Mrs. Weasley about the toffees.

The room at the top of the house where Ron slept looked much as it had the last time that Harry had come to stay. The same posters of Ron's favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping ceiling, and the fish tank on the windowsill, which had previously held frog spawn, now contained one extremely large frog. Ron's old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, and for that Harry was glad. He had to hide his scowl from Hermione's view. Peter Pettigrew was just one more traitor he had to add to the list of people he wanted to personally throttle.

"Have you had a good summer, Harry?" Hermione asked after they settled into the room, "Did you get our food parcels and everything?"

"Yes, and I must thank you two," Harry said with a smile.

"You've been talking different, Harry." Ron blurted out, and Harry blinked. He hadn't noticed.

"Oh honestly, Ron," Hermione rolled her eyes, "Just because some of us decide to actually use our words instead of gargling through them doesn't mean anything."

Ron went pink around the ears as he hastily changed the subject, "Anyway, have you heard from—?" he began, but another look from Hermione made him fall silent.

Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic last year that they were almost as concerned about Harry's godfather as he was. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was still a bad idea. No one but they and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence. As much as Harry liked Ginny, he knew that she simply had to be kept in the dark about some things for her own good.

"I think they've stopped arguing," Hermione announced to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry, "Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?"

"Yeah, all right then," Ron deflected, following Hermione out the door and back down the stairs.

* * *

The four of them left Ron's room and went back downstairs to find Mrs. Weasley alone in the kitchen, looking extremely bad-tempered.

"We're eating out in the garden," she said when they came in, "There's just not room for eleven people in here. Could you take the plates outside, girls? Bill and Charlie are setting up the tables. Knives and forks, please, you two," she said to Ron and Harry, pointing her wand a little more vigorously than she had intended at a pile of potatoes in the sink, which shot out of their skins so fast that they ricocheted off the walls and ceiling. "Oh for heaven's sake," she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes.

"Those two!" she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard, and Harry knew she meant Fred and George, "I don't know what's going to happen to them, I really don't. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can…"

Mrs. Weasley slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand tip as she stirred.

"It's not as though they haven't got brains," she continued irritably, taking the saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, "but they're wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they'll be in real trouble. I've had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they're going, they'll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office."

Mrs. Weasley jabbed her wand at the cutlery drawer, which shot open. Ron jumped out of the way as several knives soared out of the drawer. Harry stepped aside as he watched the knives fly across the kitchen before they began chopping the potatoes, which had just been tipped back into the sink by the dustpan.

"I don't know where we went wrong with them," the Weasley matriarch breathed, putting down her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. "It's been the same for years, one thing after another, and they won't listen to—" she had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and turned into a giant rubber mouse, "OH NOT AGAIN!"

"ONE OF THEIR FAKE WANDS AGAIN!" the plump woman shouted, throwing the fake wand across the room where it clattered to the floor, "How many times have I told them not to leave them lying around?" she grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove was smoking.

"C'mon," Ron said hurriedly to Harry, seizing a handful of cutlery from the open drawer, "let's go help Bill and Charlie."

They left Mrs. Weasley and headed out the backdoor into the yard. Outside a very loud crashing noise was coming from the other side of the house. The source of the commotion was revealed as they entered the garden, and saw that Bill and Charlie both had their wands out, and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other's table out of the air. Fred and George were cheering, Ginny was laughing, and Hermione was hovering near the hedge, apparently torn between amusement and anxiety.

Harry frowned as he found this a very large waste of power, but shook his head. These thoughts were more along the thinking he had as Xemnas back when Luxord and Xigbar used their powers over time and space respectively for such petty manners, like fun and games. He was no longer running an organization bent on the reclaiming of their lost hearts. He was no longer trying to obtain Kingdom Hearts.

Harry was also finding that the more he accepted himself as Xemnas, the more he opened himself to the memories and the powers and the personality that had once been so prominent.

Bill's table caught Charlie's with a huge bang and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy's head poking out of a window on the second floor, yelling for them to keep the racket down. Bill made a smart remark from working brother to working brother, but that only appeared to upset Percy more as he slammed the window shut. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg and conjured tablecloths from nowhere.

By seven o'clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Mrs. Weasley's excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky. To Harry, who had been living on meals of whatever was left of his cooking and increasingly stale cake all summer, this was paradise. The Dursleys had placed him, too, on a diet with Dudley. They thought he could stand to lose a few pounds, and even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were going without.

Well, Harry knew his dear uncle was sneaking in crumpets and teacakes on his way to and from work.

Harry listened rather than talked as he helped himself to chicken and ham pie, boiled potatoes, and salad. At the far end of the table, Percy was telling his father all about his report on cauldron bottoms. Apparently a man named Ludo Bagman had gifted Mr. Weasley with the Quidditch World Cup tickets in good spirit from a favor that was done for his brother, some dullard named Otto who had gotten into trouble. Percy was also hinting at some top secret business he was involved with, but no one was taking the bait only to have Percy flounder and flail with his pompous attitude. In another conversation, Mrs. Weasley was trying to get her son Bill to forgo his long hair and earring for a more professional appearance. Fred, George, and Charlie were chatting about the World Cup. The match was Bulgaria against Ireland, and it seemed the brothers were split on who was favored to win.

"It's got to be Ireland," Charlie said thickly through a mouthful of potatoes, "They flattened Peru in the semifinals."

"Bulgaria has got Viktor Krum, though," Fred countered spiritedly.

"Krum's _one_ decent player, Ireland has got _seven_ ," Charlie replied shortly, settling back in his chair with a resigned sigh, "I wish England had got through, though. That was embarrassing, that was."

"What happened?" Harry asked over the rim of his cup.

"Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten," Charlie sulked gloomily, "Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg."

"Hmm, quite the shame," Harry murmured while sitting down his drink.

Mr. Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert. By the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Harry was feeling extremely well fed and at peace with the world as he watched several gnomes sprinting through the rosebushes, laughing madly and closely pursued by Crookshanks, Hermione's familiar.

* * *

Ron looked carefully up the table to check that the rest of the family were all busy talking, then he said very quietly to Harry, "So, _have_ you heard from Sirius lately?"

Hermione looked around, listening closely.

"Yes, I have." Harry spoke softly, "Twice. When we wrote, he sounded fine. I wrote to him yesterday to tell him I was here." Harry suddenly remembered the reason he had originally picked up a quill to write Sirius. It had been just a short message when he sent it off with Hedwig, just something to tell Sirius he was going to be at the Burrow and then going off with the Weasleys to the Quidditch World Cup. The real reason he had started was to ask Sirius about his dreams, but had stopped himself. Now, he wanted desperately to tell Ron and Hermione about his past life as Xemnas. About his scar hurting again, and about the dreams he was having concerning Voldemort's present situation… but he really didn't want to worry them just now, not when he himself was feeling so happy and peaceful. Not when he was just coming off a few days of knowing he had actually lived a past life himself.

Additionally, Harry wasn't too sure how they would react to him having been the leader of a group hell-bent on universal domination through the completion of Kingdom Hearts…

"Look at the time," Mrs. Weasley said suddenly, checking her wristwatch. Harry blinked, and remembered what he did with his own when he reflexively checked his own. He would have to reclaim it from the Realm of Darkness at some point tonight. It had been a gift, after all. "You really should be in bed, the whole lot of you. You'll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. Harry, if you leave your school list out, I'll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. I'm getting everyone else's. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time."

Again Harry had to blink in surprise, "Astonishing! I rather hope it does this time as well!" he said with much enthusiasm. Harry liked Quidditch. He had been on the Gryffindor House Quidditch team ever since his first year at Hogwarts and owned one of the best racing brooms in the world, a Firebolt. Flying came more naturally to Harry than anything else in the magical world, and he played in the position of Seeker on the Gryffindor House team.

"Well, I certainly don't," Percy spat sanctimoniously, "I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days."

"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" Fred laughed with George doing the same, the two leaning on each other while Percy went very red in the face.

"That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" Percy said, scandalized and affronted, "It was nothing personal!"

"It was," Fred whispered to Harry as they got up from the table, "We sent it."

" _How very childish_ ," the thought crossed Harry's mind in a dull and monotone voice, but Harry gave it no true concern as he smiled onward and laughed along with the others in good cheer. He liked the pranks Fred and George pulled, even if some were juvenile in the eyes of his Xemnas perspective.

He would never again hear himself in that droning emotionless voice. He was Harry Potter now and even if he accepted that he once was Xemnas, it did not mean he wanted to repeat the same mistakes. Harry knew how some of his past could be useful, like the powers and knowledge, but other parts needed pruning.

So, as he walked away from the darkness of the star blanketed night sky, Harry thought to trim at his thoughts tonight while he slept. In the privacy of his own mind, there was only himself and the personification of his life as Xemnas. Harry could not call the two separate since they were both himself. They were more like two sides of the same coin. The cold and detached Xemnas, the Superior of the In-Between, standing back to back with the warm and welcoming Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.


	3. The Reminiscent Persona

**Chapter 3: The Reminiscent Persona**

* * *

Harry felt as though he had barely lain down to sleep in Ron's room when he was being shaken awake by Mrs. Weasley.

"Time to go, Harry, dear," she whispered, moving away to wake Ron.

Harry felt around for his glasses, put them on, and sat up. It was still dark outside. Ron muttered indistinctly as his mother roused him. At the foot of Harry's mattress he saw two large, disheveled shapes emerging from tangles of blankets.

"It's time already?" said Fred groggily.

They dressed in silence, too sleepy then to even talk. Harry felt a lot better than he did yesterday. Sleeping without dreaming of Voldemort's activities was always an improvement, but since he decidedly took on his former life of Xemnas, it felt like Harry's arms and legs were finally attached to his body instead of hanging off by wire like puppet limbs.

Harry gave a larger yawn than he wanted as he stretched, following the others downstairs into the kitchen where Mrs. Weasley was preparing breakfast and Mr. Weasley was sitting at the table, checking a sheaf of large parchment tickets. The head of the Weasley family looked up as the boys entered and spread his arms so that they could see his clothes more clearly. He was wearing what appeared to be a golfing sweater and a very old pair of jeans, slightly too big for him and held up with a thick leather belt.

"What do you think?" he asked anxiously, "We're supposed to go incognito. So, do I look like a Muggle, Harry?"

"Yeah," Harry said, smiling as he was no longer speaking with the professional air that he had once held as Xemnas, "very good on you."

"Where are Bill and Charlie and Per-Per-Percy?" George asked, failing to stifle a huge yawn.

"Well, they're Apparating, aren't they?" Mrs. Weasley said, heaving a large pot over to the table and starting to ladle porridge into bowls, "They need the rest, so they're going to pop there and sleeping for a few extra hours."

"So they're still in bed?" Fred muttered grumpily, pulling his bowl of porridge toward him, "Why can't we Apparate, too?"

"Because you're not of age and you haven't passed your test," the Weasley family matriarch snapped at him, "And where have those girls got to?" she bustled out of the kitchen and they heard her climbing the stairs.

"You have to pass a test to Apparate?" Harry asked. He knew that Apparating meant disappearing from one place and reappearing almost instantly in another, but had never known any Hogwarts student to do it, and understood that it was very difficult without practice. Harry thought he might be able to handle it just fine if someone told him how to do it. It couldn't be any more difficult than opening a Door to Darkness.

"Hmm, oh yes," Mr. Weasley mumbled, tucking the tickets safely into the back pocket of his jeans, "The Department of Magical Transportation had to fine a couple of people the other day for Apparating without a license. It's not easy, Apparition, and when it's not done properly it can lead to nasty complications. This pair I'm talking about went and splinched themselves."

Everyone around the table except Harry winced.

" _Splinched_?" Harry echoed, tasting the word on his tongue.

"They left half of themselves behind," Mr. Weasley explained, now spooning large amounts of treacle onto his porridge, "So, of course, they were stuck. Couldn't move either way. Had to wait for the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad to sort them out. Meant a fair bit of paperwork, I can tell you, what with the Muggles who spotted the body parts they'd left behind."

Harry had a sudden vision of a pair of legs and an eyeball lying abandoned on the pavement of Privet Drive.

Perhaps it was a touch more difficult than he initially thought, and Harry would wait until he was properly instructed through the whole process before he tried anything…

"Were they alright?" he asked as Mr. Weasley nodded.

"Oh yes," the man said matter-of-factly, "But they got a heavy fine, and I don't think they'll be trying it again in a hurry. You don't mess around with Apparition. There are plenty of adult wizards who don't bother with it. Most prefer brooms, slower, but safer."

"Charlie had to take the test twice," Fred said with an amused grin.

"He failed the first time," George explained with the same grin, "Apparated five miles south of where he meant to, right on top of some poor old woman doing her shopping."

"Yes, well, he passed the second time," Mrs. Weasley defended, marching back into the kitchen amid hearty sniggers.

"Percy only passed two weeks ago," George rolled his eyes, "He's been Apparating downstairs every morning since, just to prove he can."

There were footsteps down the passageway. Hermione and Ginny came into the kitchen, both looking pale and drowsy.

"Why do we have to be up so early?" Ginny said, rubbing her eyes and sitting down at the table.

"We've got a bit of a walk," said Mr. Weasley.

"Walk?" Harry was once again echoing the man's words with confusion. "What, are we walking to the World Cup?"

"No, no, that's miles and miles away," Mr. Weasley smiled with the same amusement Fred and George usually had dancing in their eyes. At least now Harry understood where they're prankster ways came from, if only a little. "We only need to walk a short way. It's just that it's very difficult for a large number of wizards to congregate without attracting Muggle attention. We have to be very careful about how we travel at the best of times, and on a huge occasion like the Quidditch World Cup—"

"George!" Mrs. Weasley yelled sharply, and they all jumped.

"What?" George voiced in an innocent tone that deceived nobody.

"What is that in your pocket?" she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Nothing!" he held up his hands.

"DON'T YOU LIE TO ME!" Mrs. Weasley pointed her wand at George's pocket and said, "Accio!" Several small, brightly colored objects zoomed out of George's pocket; he made a grab for them but missed, and they sped right into Mrs. Weasley's outstretched hand.

"We told you to destroy them!" Mrs. Weasley was furious, holding up what were unmistakably more Ton-Tongue Toffees, "We told you to get rid of the lot! Empty your pockets, go on, both of you!"

It was an unpleasant scene; the twins had evidently been trying to smuggle as many toffees out of the house as possible, and it was only by using her Summoning Charm that Mrs. Weasley managed to find them all. "ACCIO! ACCIO! ACCIO!" she shouted, and toffees zoomed from all sorts of unlikely places, including the lining of George's jacket and the turn-ups of Fred's jeans.

"We spent six months developing those!" Fred shouted at his mother as she threw the toffees away.

"OH A FINE WAY TO SPEND SIX MONTHS!" she shrieked, "No wonder you didn't get more O.W.L.s!"

* * *

All in all, the atmosphere was not very friendly as they took their departure. Mrs. Weasley was still glowering as she kissed Mr. Weasley on the cheek, though not nearly as much as the twins, who had each hoisted their rucksacks onto their backs and walked out without a word to her.

They set off across the dark yard. Mr. Weasley led the way in front as Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny followed after Fred and George. It was chilly and the moon was still out. Only a dull, greenish tinge along the horizon to their right showed that daybreak was drawing closer. Harry walked alongside Mr. Weasley while the man explained to him how it was possible for a hundred thousand wizards to go unnoticed by the Muggle world. This led into an explanation on Portkeys.

"They're objects that are used to transport wizards from one spot to another at a prearranged time." The man enlightened Harry as they trekked onward, "You can do large groups at a time if you need to with a Portkey. There have been two hundred Portkeys placed at strategic points around Britain, and the nearest one to us is up at the top of Stoatshead Hill, so that's where we're headed."

Mr. Weasley took that moment to point ahead of them, where a large black mass rose beyond the village of Ottery St. Catchpole.

"What sort of objects are Portkeys?" Harry asked curiously. He couldn't help it. In his previous life he had at one point been a scientist and top researcher. Curiosity was one of his keen traits, in both lives.

"Well, they can be anything," Mr. Weasley said, smiling, "Unobtrusive things, obviously, so Muggles don't go picking them up and playing with them… Stuff they'll just think is litter…"

They trudged down the dark, dank lane toward the village, the silence broken only by their footsteps. The sky lightened very slowly as they made their way through the village, its inky blackness diluting to deepest blue. Harry's hands and feet were freezing. Mr. Weasley kept checking his watch. They didn't have breath to spare for talking as they began to climb Stoatshead Hill, stumbling occasionally in hidden rabbit holes, slipping on thick black tuffets of grass. Each breath Harry took was sharp in his chest when, at last, his feet found level ground.

"Whew," panted Mr. Weasley, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sweater. "Well, we've made good time — we've got about ten minutes…" Hermione came over the crest of the hill last, clutching a stitch in her side. "Now we just need the Portkey. It won't be big… Come on."

They spread out, searching. Harry had absolutely no idea what they were even searching for, only seeing rocks and grassy terrain. They had only been looking for a couple of minutes, however, when a shout displaced the still air.

"Over here, Arthur! Over here, son, we've got it!"

Two tall figures were silhouetted against the starry sky on the other side of the hilltop.

"Amos!" Mr. Weasley cried, smiling as he strode over to the man who had shouted. The rest of them followed.

Mr. Weasley was shaking hands with a ruddy-faced wizard with a scrubby brown beard, who was holding a moldy-looking old boot in his other hand.

"This is Amos Diggory, everyone," Mr. Weasley introduced, "He works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?"

Cedric Diggory was an extremely handsome boy of around seventeen. He was Captain and Seeker of the Hufflepuff House Quidditch team at Hogwarts.

"Hey," Cedric greeted, looking around at them all. Everybody greeted him in return except Fred and George, who merely nodded. They had never quite forgiven Cedric for beating their team, Gryffindor, in the first Quidditch match of the previous year.

"Long walk, Arthur?" Cedric's father asked.

"Not too bad," Mr. Weasley replied while wiping sweat from his brow, "We live just on the other side of the village there. You?"

"Had to get up at two, didn't we, Ced? I tell you, I'll be glad when he's got his Apparition test. Still, not complaining. Quidditch World Cup! Wouldn't miss it for a sack full o' Galleons — and the tickets cost about that. Mind you, looks like I got off easy…" Amos Diggory peered good-naturedly around at the three Weasley boys, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny. "All these yours, Arthur?"

"Oh no, only the redheads," Mr. Weasley shook his head, pointing out his children, "This is Hermione, friend of Ron's. And Harry, another friend—"

"Merlin's beard," Amos Diggory breathed, his eyes widening. "Harry? Harry Potter?"

"Yes I am," Harry said, extending his hand to which Mr. Diggory shook earnestly, "A pleasure to meet you." After three to four years now, Harry was used to people looking curiously at him when they met him. Used to the way their eyes moved at once to the lightning scar on his forehead. Perhaps before it had made him feel uncomfortable, but with his past as Xemnas it was now more entertaining than anything else.

"Ced's talked about you, of course," Amos Diggory said at once, puffing out his chest a bit. "Told us all about playing against you last year… I said to him, I said — Ced, that'll be something to tell your grandchildren, that will… You beat Harry Potter!" Harry was greatly amused by this as he remained silent. He smiled a little to keep from laughing.

Fred and George were both scowling again. And Cedric's look of embarrassment made Harry cover a snort which escaped him.

"Harry fell off his broom, Dad," he muttered. "I told you… it was an accident…"

"Yes, but _you_ didn't fall off, did you?" roared Amos genially, slapping his son on his back, "Always modest, our Ced, always the gentleman… but the best man won, I'm sure Harry'd say the same, wouldn't you, eh? One falls off his broom, one stays on, you don't need to be a genius to tell which one's the better flier!"

"Must be nearly time," Mr. Weasley said quickly before wands were drawn from his children over the subject. He pulled out his watch again. "Do you know whether we're waiting for any more, Amos?"

"No, the Lovegoods have been there for a week already and the Fawcetts couldn't get tickets," Mr. Diggory responded with a shake of his head, then looked right at Mr. Weasley, "There aren't any more of us in this area, are there?"

"Not that I know of," Mr. Weasley replied, staring at his watch. "Yes, it's a minute off… We'd better get ready…" He looked around at Harry and Hermione. "You just need to touch the Portkey, that's all, a finger will do—"

With difficulty, owing to their bulky backpacks, the nine of them crowded around the old boot held out by Amos Diggory. They all stood there, in a tight circle, as a chill breeze swept over the hilltop. Nobody spoke. It suddenly occurred to Harry how odd this would look if a Muggle were to walk up here now…

Nine people, two of them grown men, clutching this manky old boot in the semidarkness, waiting…

"Three…" Mr. Weasley muttered, one eye still on his watch, "two… one…!"

It happened immediately: Harry felt as though a hook just behind his navel had been suddenly jerked irresistibly forward. His feet left the ground; he could feel Ron and Hermione on either side of him, their shoulders banging into his; they were all speeding forward in a howl of wind and swirling color; his forefinger was stuck to the boot as though it was pulling him magnetically onward and then—

His feet slammed into the ground. Ron staggered into him, but Harry managed to keep his balance while the Portkey hit the ground with a heavy thud near where Hermione was collecting herself and Ginny. Harry looked around, seeing Mr. Weasley, Mr. Diggory, and Cedric were still standing like he and Ron. They all looked thoroughly windswept.

"Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill," said a voice.

* * *

Harry disentangled himself from Ron and moved forward to have a glance around. They had arrived on what appeared to be a deserted stretch of misty moor. In front of them was a pair of tired and grumpy-looking wizards, one of whom was holding a large gold watch, the other a thick roll of parchment and a quill.

Both were dressed as Muggles, though very inexpertly: The man with the watch wore a tweed suit with thigh-length galoshes; his colleague, a kilt and a poncho.

"Morning, Basil," Mr. Weasley met them, picking up the boot and handing it to the kilted wizard, who threw it into a large box of used Portkeys beside him. Harry could see an old newspaper, an empty drinks can, and a punctured football.

"Hello there, Arthur," Basil muttered wearily, "Not on duty, eh? It's all right for some… We've been here all night… You'd better get out of the way, we've got a big party coming in from the Black Forest at five-fifteen. Hang on, I'll find your campsite… Weasley… Weasley…" the man consulted his parchment list. "About a quarter of a mile's walk over there, first field you come to. Site manager's called Mr. Roberts. Diggory… second field… ask for Mr. Payne."

"Thanks, Basil," Mr. Weasley showed appreciation through a respectful nod, and he beckoned everyone to follow him.

They set off across the deserted moor, unable to make out much through the mist. After about twenty minutes, a small stone cottage next to a gate swam into view. Beyond it, Harry could just make out the ghostly shapes of hundreds and hundreds of tents, rising up the gentle slope of a large field toward a dark wood on the horizon. They said good-bye to the Diggorys and approached the cottage door. A man was standing in the doorway, looking out at the tents. Harry knew at a glance that this was the only real Muggle for several acres. When he heard their footsteps, he turned his head to look at them.

"Morning!" Mr. Weasley called out brightly.

"Morning," the Muggle man greeted back with less enthusiasm.

"Would you be Mr. Roberts?"

"Aye, I would," Mr. Roberts confirmed with a nod. "And who're you?"

"Weasley — two tents, booked a couple of days ago?"

"Aye," Mr. Roberts consulted a list tacked to the door. "You've got a space up by the wood there. Just the one night?"

"That's it," Mr. Weasley chirped happily.

"You'll be paying now, then?" Mr. Roberts asked, his eyebrows lifting a little.

"Ah — right — certainly —" Mr. Weasley said before retreating a short distance from the cottage and beckoned Harry toward him.

"Help me, Harry," he muttered, pulling a roll of Muggle money from his pocket and starting to peel the notes apart.

Harry helped Mr. Weasley with the correct amount to give the man, but when the Muggle guy started asking too many question, a wizard from the Ministry popped into existence in front of him and wiped the man's mind of the last three minutes.

"Been having a lot of trouble with him." the wizard said with a weary sigh and slumped shoulders, "Bloke needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy. And Ludo Bagman's not helping. Trotting around talking about Bludgers and Quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-Muggle security. Blimey, I'll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur." And just like that, he was gone as quickly as he came.

* * *

They set out along the campsite and already found people in tents coming out and starting fires for breakfast. Mr. Weasels led them to a spot on the campsite that had a sign pegged into the ground that read _Weezley_.

Harry resisted the urge to laugh openly at the spelling, but not well enough it seemed. George, who was next to him, still took the moment to lightly punch him in the arm.

"Couldn't have a better spot!" Mr. Weasley squealed happily, "The field is just on the other side of the wood there, we're as close as we could be."

He hoisted his backpack from his shoulders. "Right," he said excitedly, "no magic allowed, strictly speaking, not when we're out in these numbers on Muggle land. We'll be putting these tents up by hand! Shouldn't be too difficult… Muggles do it all the time… Here, Harry, where do you reckon we should start?"

Harry had never been camping in a day in this life or the last. As Harry Potter, the Dursleys had never taken him on any kind of holiday, preferring to leave him with Mrs. Figg, an old neighbor. As Xemnas, he had always thought it beneath him to wallow in the muck with others, or to do something as mundane as camp when he possessed the power to create entire worlds through sheer control over Nothingness. Even still, with Hermione helping him, Harry was smart enough to work out where most of the poles and pegs should go. They allowed Mr. Weasley run of the mallet, though that had been more of a hindrance than a help, because he got thoroughly overexcited when it came to using the tool.

They finally managed to erect a pair of shabby two-man tents, and all stepped back to proudly inspect their hard work.

"That was pretty quick Harry," Ginny complimented, "Do you go camping often?"

"No, I've never been," Harry replied honestly, "the Dursleys aren't really camping people."

"Let's see what they're like on the inside!" Mr. Weasley exclaimed, dropping to his hands and knees as he entered the first tent.

"Well of course they look good," Hermione said in a huff, shooting Harry a quizzical look, "But still we won't all fit."

"We'll be a bit cramped," the head of the Weasley family called from inside, "but I think we'll all squeeze in. Come and have a look."

"Just go in," Ginny said, giving Hermione a slight nudge at the hip, "I want to see the look on your face."

Hermione huffed again, but dropped to her knees and crawled through the tent flap with Ginny hot on her heels. Harry followed them; curious to see what the insides of the tent looked like.

He came in walking, that was the first thing that told him it was not an ordinary tent aside from the previous hints in conversation. He walked into what looked like an old-fashioned, three-room flat, complete with bathroom and kitchen. Oddly enough, it was furnished in exactly the same sort of style as Mrs. Figg's house. There were crocheted covers on the mismatched chairs and a strong smell of cats.

Suddenly, Harry found himself missing the Castle That Never Was. If he could, while out for the Quidditch World Cup, Harry thought he might be able to slip away for a few hours and return to his former citadel for a walk down memory lane.

"Well, it's not for long," Mr. Weasley said with a content sigh, mopping his bald patch with a handkerchief and peering in at the four bunk beds that stood in the bedroom, "I borrowed this from Perkins at the office. Doesn't camp much anymore, poor fellow, he's got lumbago."

He picked up the dusty kettle and peered inside it, "We'll need water."

"There's a tap marked on this map the Muggle gave us," Ron said, "It's on the other side of the field."

"Well, why don't you, Harry, and Hermione go and get us some water then," Mr. Weasley handed over the kettle and a couple of saucepans, "And the rest of us will get some wood for a fire?"

"But we've got an oven," Ron argued, "Why can't we just–"

"Ron, anti-Muggle security!" Mr. Weasley reminded his youngest son, his face shining with anticipation, "When real muggles camp, they cook on fires outdoors. I've seen them at it!"

* * *

After a quick tour of the girls' tent, which was slightly smaller than the boys', though without the smell of cats, Harry made an excuse of needing to use the loo before setting out. It was rather curious, he knew, when he walked clear past their two tents which had bathrooms inside and went in the direction opposition of the where the tab was located. Harry glanced back only once to see Ron and Hermione muttering between themselves, watching him get further and further away without stopping. Harry was glad that his friends knew at least sometimes when he wanted to explore things alone.

But it was not the World Cup grounds Harry was planning to explore. As soon as he was far enough away, Harry started to go in random directions further into the woods before anyone could spot him for who he was. Through the thick tree trunks, Harry could see a sea of green shamrock colored tents for the Irish supporters. He even caught glimpse of Seamus and Dean, who looked to be at the Cup with Seamus' mum, Mrs. Finnegan. Hiding and stalking through the woods, Harry passed watching tent after tent. Some were normal looking muggle tents and others were definitely wizard tents. Such as the tent that had a chimney and a peacock tethered out front. Right before he was sure he was deep enough in the woods for leaving, Harry saw a sea of red and black. That had to be the Bulgarian supporters, who Harry could hear were very loud with thick accents.

Sure that no one could see him through the misty woods and low fog, Harry outstretched a hand in front of him, concentrating on where he wanted to appear through the Corridors of Darkness. He could still see his once beloved fortress. Its massive grey majesty floating weightlessly above the Dark City and dominating the skyline of the simple little world he had spawned. The Dark City beneath his floating castle, a metropolis steeped so deeply into the depths of the darkness they had gathered that it had been stained permanently black. Harry could still recall the magical bridge which connected the castle to the city below. The way the castle entrance and its many hallways were patterned with the symbol of the many Nobodies which infested his domain.

Wisps of black tendrils gathered at the point in which Harry's hand stretched out in the distance. They wrapped around one another like so many snakes in a pit, warping and bending to each other as they blended together into a uniform body of oozing black manifest which began to shape into a vague dark doorway. It writhed and wriggled in place, but its form was solid and mysterious. This was the first fully formed Corridor of Darkness in which Harry had create under his experimental power.

And it was simply perfect to Harry as he smiled into the gloom of its darkness.

Then, as Harry made to step through this archway, something solid slammed into his back with full force. Harry lost his footing under the sudden surprise, falling face first through the open portal and through darkness itself. The thing which tackled him must have been a person, seeing as it gripped the back of his shirt while they stumbled forth into the murky corridor.

Harry's destination had already been set, so the corridor merely adjusted itself to his alignment, causing Harry to fall and tumble downward instead of walking straight and upright through the hallway of gloom. The hand clasping at the back of Harry's shirt twist away from him, but at the last moment it redoubled its grip on his back and another hand wrapped itself around his chest to get a better hold. Harry could not see, having been so focused on his chosen location that he had no time to prepare his vision for the darkness around him and his unknown passenger. Everything was black. The air around him was damp and cold like an autumn night. Harry could feel the darkness as he once did in his past life. It pressed hard against him from every direction and angle, trying to invade his heart. In the past he had no heart and for extra precaution, as Xemnas, Harry had worn a special cloak which protected the wearer from the permeating blackness. This time, however, Harry felt his lungs choke on the air as darkness tried to invade his every breath. He could not breathe, the darkness gripping his chest as though they were wrapped by iron chains. It was a sensation Harry aligned to drowning, but much worse as death would not be the end of his enduring pain.

Thankfully, just as quickly as the worse of it all came it was all over. Harry gasped a great lungful of cool air and opened his streaming eyes when he became aware of his shutting them tightly. The darkness was not altogether how he remembered it. But, Harry straightened himself up none the less. So long ago he had been without a heart to pollute and held a mastery over his powers long before he knew about traversing the dark realm. Now he was barely a mediocre wizard along with being in the process of reevaluating and reeducating himself of his former abilities.

Harry did not even bother with turning back as he stared up into the whites and blacks and grey which made up the high castle walls of his domain. This intruder was within his power to deal with. The World That Never Was recognized the return of its ruler and creator. As soon as he stepped foot in this world, or rather stumbled hastily toward the first solid wall while his unwanted companion was thrown to the floor in a heap, the world and castle hummed lightly in joy to the return of its lord and master. True, there was dust an inch or two thick on everything within sight, and a few of the structures were badly in need of repairs or complete replacement, but Harry knew this would be the case. Even with its rundown appearance, Harry could still feel his heart swell with joy.

This place, which had once been used for such terrible evil, was home to Harry no matter what past stained its grey walls and stylized floors.

And Harry, with a bounce in his step and gentle smile taking over his face, walked away from his near unconscious acquaintance who watched him go with bleary vision.

* * *

Draco Malfoy, at first, had simply followed Potter because he saw the chance to ridicule his nemesis for the ridiculous excuse he concocted to get away from his two lackeys, Weasley and Granger, just before practically fleeing full sprint away from the two losers. While following Potter into the forest, Draco hoped to interrupt some sort of secret rendezvous the Golden Boy of Gryffindor was keeping with some desperate witch– or even wizard, to Draco's vicious imaginary glee should Potter be hiding such deviant inclinations– and use the information as a source of blackmail to keep Potter on his toes for a short time before running straight to his father with the information and then to the tabloids. Then he would watch Potter weep over his decimated secrets and be there to collect Saint Potter's tears into a chalice for the highest bidder to redeem. That would have been the sweetest of hours for one Draco Malfoy.

But as Fate would have it, Draco would have never in all his days upon the Earth believed that he would witness Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, and all-around saintly angel of Hogwarts practicing magic so vile that it ripped the shadows from the trees and made them writhe in abject pain and torture. Never would Draco conceive the thought that he would one day bear sole witness to seeing Potter wield Dark Arts so dark that it summoned the very manifestation of the gloom and twilight into his presence.

So it was with this that Draco had to get closer and be sure that someone had not simply taken Potter's form for use, or something like that. Draco stepped closer to the scene, making sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him as Potter summoned some sort of archway of pure black midnight.

And if all the shadows in the area hadn't been ripped away by Potter's dark magic, then Draco was sure he would have seen the overgrown root he tripped over. Without meaning to, Draco reached out to steady himself on Potter, but never expected that Potter would be trying to step into the vile blackness he had just summoned.

A moment passed in what felt like an eternity of agonizing darkness. It was cold and damp, with the bleak blackness enclosing so tightly around Draco that it felt like it was trying to penetrate his skin and exit through the other side of his body. He had Apparated plenty of times alongside his mother and father, and even once with Severus, but this feeling… This dimness which eclipsed all of Draco's senses made him feel not like he was being forced through a very tight rubber tube. No, it made Draco feel like he was being dragged through cold midnight ocean waters by demonic horses whilst wrapped in iron bonds that only grew tighter the longer he struggled.

Draco was glad when the moment ended as fast as it had come, expelling him from the darkness into bright light a second later. He was still falling, but Potter's body tumbled away from him and he crumbled to the ground. His strength, which before the journey through shadow, had been full and whole, but afterward he felt wane and stretched thin. It was a feeling he only had after a particularly tough game of Quidditch against Potter or when he spent too long with Severus in the Potions workroom. It was a few seconds of gulping great lungfuls of cool air before he realized that the backwoods of England had vanished from around him. He and Potter had been dumped somewhere unfamiliar. It was a castle, but none like the ones Draco knew. The dust and decay was a familiar theme, but not the solid and uniform sigils which ran from floor to wall and back again without any pause to signify where the patterns of strange symbols began or to where they ended. It was also odd for any castle to be a blend of white and black and greys that's all mixed together in order to bring greater confusion to Draco's fashionably astute mindset. He was unsure if this all worked well in the way of genius, or if it all was just the random design of some eccentric loon.

Draco's attention snapped back to where footfalls echoed through the vacancy of the abandoned castle. Potter was walking away, his feet leading him as though he had walked these halls a hundred times. It was the same way Draco traversed his own manor home, with his eyes straight ahead and never a turn of his head. If Potter did not know this place, he would be glancing around like an idiot as sure as Draco's eyes were fleeting in every direction with suspicion. Hearing Potter's footsteps grow quieter with distance, Draco scrambled to his feet and gave chase.

But at the turn of the first corridor, Draco was stopped in his tracks by emerald green eyes gazing down at him from behind full spectacles.

"Good evening, Draco." Potter practically purred, a look of pure calculation on his face as he held his wand at the ready. The Stunner spell he threw was dodged as Draco dove to the side on unabashed reflexes. Potter seemed more amused by this, and even laughed when Draco rolled around to face him once again, drawing his wand. Draco's Leg Locking curse missed the Gryffindor by inches when the boy merely stepped to the side as though allowing someone to pass him in the hallway. Then he cracked the tile beside Draco with a purple jinx. Draco threw himself sideways, and flicked his wand, but the golden boy was still smiling smugly as he swished his wand and blocked the jinx. Draco raised his wand for another, but he had to shoot to his feet when there was a loud bang and the sigil along the wall behind him exploded. Draco attempted a Body-Bind hex at this point, and already knew that his next spell in line would be more deadly, but when that backfired off the wall behind Potter's ear, the outrageous Gryffindor threw another Stunner that caused Draco to bend backward at an odd angle. He slipped as Potter, whose face was still quite self-satisfied, pointed his wand at Draco's chest. It took Draco a second to realize that while only half his own spells had been cast aloud, never once did he hear Potter utter a single word after greeting him.

"Stupefy," Potter purred with the same light tone that he had greeted Draco in. The Stunner caught Draco square where Potter aimed, and he staggered backward before he collapsed altogether onto the floor in a great heap, his wand falling from his limp right hand. Potter was saying something, but with a gentle wave of his wand in front of the blonde's face, Draco's eyelids grew heavy and his vision clouded with hazy thoughts. His last sight was of Potter picking up his wand, staring straight at him with the same smug expression still on his face.

"Welcome to my new little club, Draco Malfoy. I hope you'll enjoy our new ties together."


	4. Sharing in Harmony

**Chapter 4: Sharing in Harmony**

* * *

A tiny boy no older than two was crouched outside a large pyramid-shaped tent, holding a wand and poking happily at a slug in the grass, which was swelling slowly to the size of a salami. His mother came hurrying out of the tent.

"How many times, Kevin? YOU DON'T — TOUCH — DADDY'S — WAND — _YECCHH_!" she trodden on the giant slug, which burst in a show of slime and ooze. Her scolding carried after them on the still air, mingling with the little boy's yells.

"YOU BUST SLUG! YOU BUST SLUG!" the little boy laughed as his mother grimaced down at her expensive heels.

A short way farther on, two little witches, barely older than Kevin, were riding toy broomsticks that rose only high enough for the girls' toes to skim the dewy grass. A Ministry wizard had already spotted them. As he hurried, he trudged past Ron and Hermione, muttering distractedly to himself, "In broad daylight! Parents having a lie-in, I suppose…"

Here and there adult wizards and witches were emerging from their tents and starting to cook breakfast. Some, with furtive looks around them, conjured fires with their wands; others were striking matches with dubious looks on their faces, as though sure this couldn't work.

Three African wizards sat in serious conversation, all of them wearing long white robes and roasting what looked like a rabbit on a bright purple fire, while a group of middle-aged American witches sat gossiping happily beneath a spangled banner stretched between their tents that read: The Salem Witches' Institute.

Hermione caught snatches of conversation in foreign languages from the inside of tents they passed, and though she couldn't much of anything with her limited study in foreign linguistics, the tone of every single voice was excited.

"Err… is it my eyes, or has everything gone green, Hermione?" Ron asked, and it wasn't just his eyes. They had walked into a patch of tents that were all covered with a thick growth of shamrocks, so that it looked as though small, oddly shaped hillocks had sprouted out of the earth. Grinning faces could be seen under those that had their flaps open.

Then, from behind them, they heard their names.

"Ron! Hermione!"

It was Seamus Finnegan, their fellow Gryffindor fourth year.

He was sitting in front of his own shamrock-covered tent, with a sandy-haired woman who had to be his mother, and his best friend, Dean Thomas, also of Gryffindor.

"Like the decorations?" Seamus asked with a huge grin, "The Ministry's not too happy."

"Ah, why shouldn't we show our proud colors?" Mrs. Finnegan huffed with indignation, hands on her hips, "You should be seeing what the Bulgarians have got dangling all over their tents." she then started eyeing Ron and Hermione beadily.

"You'll be supporting Ireland, of course?" she added, and it was only after they had assured her that they were indeed supporting Ireland, they were allowed to set off again.

Though as they did, Ron said, "Like we'd say anything else surrounded by that lot with her giving us the Evil Eye…"

"I wonder what the Bulgarians have got dangling all over their tents?" Hermione pondered, curious of it all, "Let's go and have a look then," and with that she pulled Ron along by his wrist. Not that he was complaining. In fact, when she glanced back at him, Ron's face was a shade of flushing red nearly matching his hair.

Hermione did not question this as she pointed to a large patch of tents up ahead, where the Bulgarian flag was fluttering in the breeze. It was colored white, green, and red with the tents not bedecked with plant life. Instead, each and every one of them had the same poster attached to it, a poster of a very surly face with heavy black eyebrows. The picture was, of course, moving, but all it did was blink and scowl.

"Krum," Ron whispered quietly.

"What?" Hermione said as Ron turned to her with surprise on his face.

"Krum!" Ron said, this time shouting. Hermione flinched back at the sudden volume, "Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian Seeker!"

"He looks really grumpy," Hermione said without thought, looking around at the many Krums blinking and scowling at her and Ron.

"'Really grumpy', she says…" Ron raised his eyes and hands to the heavens, "Who cares what he looks like? He's unbelievable. He's really young, too. Only just eighteen or something. He's a genius, you wait until tonight, you'll see."

There was already a small queue for the tap in the corner of the field. Ron and Hermione joined it, right behind a pair of men who were having a heated argument.

Hermione tuned out the argument of the pair in order to frown in her reflective thoughts. Harry had disappeared, probably to look around on his own and have some time to himself. Even if she thought it would do him some good, Hermione still felt this was too dangerous with everything that had occurred last year at Hogwarts. True, Sirius Black had turned out to be a nice guy who was clearly not out to murder Harry, but that didn't mean others were so low on the queue that they couldn't fill in Sirius' place in line for wishing death upon one Harry Potter.

All in all, Hermione was praying for Harry's safe return to them. She was praying even harder that he came back with something useful at least.

"Just put them on, Archie! You can't walk around like that, the Muggle at the gate's already getting suspicious—"

"I bought this in a Muggle shop," the old wizard argued stubbornly, "Muggles wear them."

"Muggle _women_ wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these," said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers.

"I'm not putting them on," said old Archie in indignation. "I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks." Hermione was overcome with such a strong fit of the giggles at this point that she had to duck out of the line and only returned when Archie had collected his water and moved away.

* * *

Walking more slowly now, because of the weight of the water, she and Ron made their way back through the campsite. Here and there, they saw more familiar faces. Other Hogwarts students with their families. Oliver Wood, the old captain of their House Quidditch team, who had just left Hogwarts, questioned her and Ron sternly about Harry's whereabouts, then preceded to drag them over to his parents' tent to introduce them right before bragging about Harry with Ron backing each and every claim, and then told them excitedly that he had just been signed to the Puddlemere United reserve team. Next they were hailed by Ernie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff fourth year, and a little farther on they saw Cho Chang, a distinctively Asian girl who played Seeker on the Ravenclaw team. She asked them too about Harry, and seemed a little disappointed by his absence. More to stop Ron from acting immature than anything, Hermione hurriedly pointed out a large group of teenagers whom she had never seen before.

"What school are they from? She asked, turning to Ron.

"Dunno, never actually met anyone who went to another school 'sides from Hogwarts. Bill had a pen-friend at a school in Brazil… This was years and years ago… and he wanted to go on an exchange trip, but Mum and Dad couldn't afford it." It still amazed her that she was the only person that Ron had absolutely no problems speaking with about his family's poor finances. Even when he talked to Harry, Ron would get pink around the ears, "His pen-friend got all offended when he said he wasn't going and sent him a cursed hat. It made his ears shrivel up."

Hermione was utterly unsurprised by the information, having run across the news about other Wizarding schools in some book or another within their first year at Hogwarts.

While almost back at their campsite with canteens sloshing with water, Hermione and Ron spied Harry returning at the same time they were.

The thing which made their eyes widen and their jaws drop was the fact that Draco Malfoy, Harry's most annoying and vicious school antagonist, was following in his footfalls at a submissive distance, his head hung in a subdued manner, and his posture screaming reluctance with every step that he made to trail after Harry. The reason they knew Malfoy was following Harry around was the simple fact that when Harry stopped in front of them and the Weasley family tents, Malfoy had stopped to with three steps separating him and Harry.

Draco Malfoy had always been a good looking boy in Hermione's option. He was a slender young man of fourteen years now, with sleek white-blond hair and cold grey eyes. His complexion was pale and rather sharp with pointed features. The expression Hermione and Ron always knew him to display was one of haughty self-absorbed arrogance, as if telling the world that he knew he was handsome atop possessing a vast wealth through his parental and family ties. Even after four years of school, Malfoy still kept his blonde hair in a tightly slicked back fashion. He had the looks of his father, but Hermione noted that he had the delicate bone structure and grace of his mother.

At the moment, however, Malfoy was nothing like himself as he stood behind Harry. Malfoy was still slender and blond, but his eyes had lost their frigid hatred when they glanced up periodically to stare at Harry's back. Instead of haughty countenance in Malfoy's expression, Hermione only saw a meek and docile appearance to the Malfoy family heir. His hair was no longer slicked, but looked to have been highly disheveled and then quickly combed back in an attempt to preserve some of its former glory. Hermione also noted that Malfoy had dark shadows under his eyes and a greyish tinge to his skin.

Hermione exchanged a glance with Ron, both dumbfounded to what Harry and Malfoy were doing together. This was made both more confusing and alarming by Malfoy's tousled exterior.

"Harry!" Hermione greeted him as soon as he was within earshot. She reached out and grasped his forearm, pulling him forward and away from Malfoy. The blonde looked to sneer for a moment, then appeared lost without Harry leading in front of him.

"What's this git doing with you, Harry?" Ron snarled, moving protectively in front of his best mate with a hand trailing along his pocketed wand. Harry laughed lightly, gently removing himself from the guard of his friends. He stood once again in front of Draco Malfoy.

"Draco crept up on me when I went exploring," Harry said with an air of amusement, and even chuckled when Malfoy flinched at his chosen words before flushing hotly to his roots. His fists clenched tightly at his sides while he looked away.

"Do not… mock me… Potter!" the blond spat with heaving breaths that looked to be winding him with each word he spoke.

"And we started talking." Harry continued after glancing back at Draco with a smirk. He spoke as though Malfoy had not opened his mouth at all. Then, Harry turned back to his friends, "It seems like a lot of things the past three years have been done because of misunderstandings I've had about the culture in the Wizarding world. It's all been my fault this whole time."

Hermione and Ron did not look convinced in the slightest, so Harry went on with a smile, "Back in our first year together at Hogwarts, remember that Draco offered me his hand in friendship."

"Yeah, and the bloody git was a right prick about it the entire time!" Ron growled, shaking his fist at Malfoy before Hermione swatted his arm down, "Harry, he was talking about choosing friends and insulted me all in one go."

"But remember that you laughed at him first," now Harry was having to improvise on the spot. He should have never expected his two very defensive friends to simply accept this drastic change at face value, "Surely anyone would react badly to that sort of embarrassment. Plus, it was our first impression. How was he supposed to recover when we bullied up on him?"

"Perhaps you're right," Hermione was now in the ring, watching Harry with narrowed eyes as though checking him for signs of bewitchment, "but what has Malfoy done over the past three years to reverse our opinion of him?"

"Nothing, that's what!" Ron spat, but Hermione raised her hand.

"Ron, quiet!" she muttered hotly, causing him to turn to her.

"But, 'Mione!" she raised her hand again, and the ginger teen fell silent, but settled for glowering at the blonde brat behind Harry.

"Hear me out." Draco moved forward suddenly, still a step behind Harry, "I wished to make amends with you all, but my family's long standing traditions of Pureblood honor would never see me do so in public. Even now, standing huddled with the three of you, I risk my family's reputation and the wrath of my father. This is how serious I am to acquire not only Harry's forgiveness, but yours as well. Granger… Weasley…"

Hermione still appeared to be watching for magically tampering with either Harry or the disheveled Malfoy, but found none in their stance or faces. Harry was looking at her with pleas of going along and Malfoy was chewing his bottom lip with worry.

"If you so much as _wiggle_ a toe out of line!" Hermione swiveled in place as she and the others were aghast that Ron was the first to consent to Malfoy's feebly conveyed sob story, "I'll have you vomiting slugs from now until the End-of-Term feast! Good for you I know a thing or two about all the Pureblood shite even though I don't like any of it."

"Ron…" Hermione whispered, unsure of where this forgiving nature was springing from within her redheaded friend.

He turned to her, a stony expression on his face, "Your family are Muggle, Hermione, so you and Harry wouldn't really understand some of the things wizard tots have to deal with growing up. Sometimes…" he looked away from her, "Sometimes its really hard to set yourself apart from the pack…"

"The pack…?" Hermione blinked in confusion, not sure what Ron meant by his words or where they were coming from.

"Hermione," Harry breathed as though if he spoke any louder she would rip his head off.

She turned back to Harry, her guard still up no matter what was going on in Ron's head, "What did you two talk about, Harry? Please, just… just try to make me understand where all this sudden change is coming from."

"I suppose I owe you that much, right?" she nodded in response, and Harry took a deep breath, "I was walking in the woods so no one would see me and start hounding me about my scar and… other things… That's when Draco found me, and nearly scared my soul from my body."

"I didn't hear any complaints when you _suggested_ our _friendship…"_ the blonde muttered, looking mutinous for a moment before he crossed his arms and looked away. Harry appeared deeply amused by Malfoy's flip-floppish nature.

"Anyhow, he wanted to talk to me. I, too, had a bad reaction to hearing him say such and drew my wand. After some back and forth, he eventually convinced me that he didn't want to fight. He even put his wand on the ground. Then he started talking about first year and how he wanted us to be friends. How everything up to this point was a front so he could interact with me without being too obvious about it. He just wanted a chance for us to meet alone so he could apologize, and once he saw me in the woods he had his chance."

"And after talking, Harry suggested coming to the two of you first and foremost for your approval. He wouldn't accept my friendship unless he gained your approval." Draco chimed in with a small sneer.

Hermione and Ron were touched, and their hearts swelled by how much Harry valued their opinions in such a serious matter.

"Just one last thing then, Harry." Ron said while sharing a glance with Hermione.

"Why does Draco look so…?" Hermione couldn't even finish, eyeing the way the hair at the top of Malfoy's head stood out at odd ends.

"He should have never taken me by surprise." Harry shrugged, grinning still as Malfoy started to look anger, "If he would have announced himself beforehand, then his misfortune could have been avoided."

"HOW DARE YOU, POTTER!" Draco roared, and a flash of light lashed out at Harry, who raised a single eyebrow and his hand, stopping the flash with his bare hand.

Hermione gasped and backed away behind Ron at seeing what was uncovered by the light. Ron, too, was back on guard as he had his wand out in the next second while Hermione fumbled for her own. Gripped tightly in Malfoy's pale trembling hands was a deadly pink and green scythe. The handle of the scythe was long, pastel green, and curved. There were two small, gold rings near the top of the handle. A small, black section at the base of the handle, and an equally small, gold section sat just above that. The main blade of the weapon was curved, rose pink, and had black glimmering just under its edges. There was another, vaguely oval-shaped blade attached to the top of the handle. It was also rose pink with the same black edges. The two blades looked to be connected by a cross shape that resembled a part of some foreign sigil in white with gold and dark rose pink edges. The overall design of this lethal sickle gave it the appearance of a plucked flower; its pink blade even resembling the pink petals of a flower Hermione had read about.

The dahlia flower…

"A powerful weapon that draws forth its wielder's true worth," Harry voice had taken on a tone Hermione could not truly place, but it sent shivers up her spine all the same. His eyes were half-lidded behind his glasses, appearing to be lifeless and cold as he smiled transparently at Malfoy while holding the scythe at bay between his fingers, "Its flower, the dahlia, represent dignity and elegance. But also… instability…"

Draco growled upon this last line of Harry's little tutorial, "Grace, in itself, is but another word for elegance, and so this is a weapon worthy of none other but the Eleventh member, that most Graceful of Assassins."

"I'll be the end of you, Xem—" Malfoy hissed tightly as he tried to force his weapon past Harry's hand and into his chest.

Before Ron or Hermione could utter forth a single word or act as protectors to Harry's mortal form, the world around them all grew cold and damp as it seemed that sunset was coming early. Harry's smile took on a chilling manner as Malfoy began to tremble more and more the longer Harry's gaze stayed pinned on him. The darkness grew around the two before finally Malfoy collapsed like a boulder was thrust upon his shoulders, causing him to kneel before Harry. His scythe dissolved back into the same dazzling show of light it had appeared. Malfoy gasped for breath, but Harry's frozen emerald eyes stayed pinned on his kneeling form.

"I am sorry… I am sorry!" Malfoy cried out, throwing himself to Harry's feet more so as though he had committed crimes against Harry worthy of instant execution, "I beg your forgiveness! All four of you!"

Hermione and Ron watched as Harry's whole chilling demeanor changed in an instant. He blinked once, and then smiled warmly at them as the temperature returned to normal and the darkness receded from the world around them. None of the other wizards and patrons seemed to notice anything out of place, as though everything that had transpired just now was hidden from them, or a simple trick of light.

Maybe it was a trick, because when Hermione blinked, Malfoy was standing behind Harry as he did before, though his hands trembled visibly.

* * *

"You lot've been ages!" George burst out of the boys' tent when Hermione was about to ask if what she had just seen was real.

"M-Met a few people," Ron said shakily, handing off the water to his brother. He was still keeping Malfoy in eyesight, but now was watching Harry closer to see if his frozen expression would return. Malfoy mumbled something to Harry, who nodded once. Malfoy left their presence by a turn of heel and sauntered away with his fists still clenching at his sides. Hermione noticed that he kept glancing back at Harry and trembling when he did.

"Did you manage to get the fire going?" Harry asked, again normal for all appearance sake. He gave Hermione's canteen to Fred, who took it with a cheeky grin.

"No, but Dad's having fun with the matches," Fred supplied as Mr. Weasley was having no success at all in lighting the fire, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Splintered matches littered the ground around him, but he looked as though he was having the time of his life.

"Oops!" the man said as he managed to light a match and promptly dropped it in surprise.

Hermione looked at Harry for a moment longer, but then turned her full attention to Mr. Weasley, calling him over.

"I can help you over here, Mr. Weasley," Hermione said kindly, taking the box from him, and showing him how to do it properly. At last they got the fire lit, though it was at least another hour before it was hot enough to cook anything. There was plenty to watch while they waited, however. Their tent seemed to be pitched right alongside a kind of thoroughfare to the field, and Ministry members kept hurrying up and down it, greeting Mr. Weasley cordially as they passed.

Mr. Weasley kept up a running commentary, mainly for Harry's and Hermione's benefit. His own children knew too much about the Ministry to be greatly interested.

"That was Cuthbert Mockridge, Head of the Goblin Liaison Office… And here comes Gilbert Wimple; he's with the Committee on Experimental Charms. He's had those horns for a while now… Hello, Arnie! That was Arnold Peasegood, he's an Obliviator — member of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, you know… Oh, and that's Bode and Croaker. They're Unspeakables."

"They're what?" Harry asked.

"From the Department of Mysteries, top secret, and no idea what they get up to." Ron filled his friend in, still eyeing him suspiciously, as though Harry would declare himself the Dark Lord reborn. But Harry knew that it was only a matter of time before they dropped their guards again. If he had no further reason to summon the Nothingness in his defense, then they would write off his earlier behavior as a trick of light or something else.

After all, Harry Potter was no monster of darkness. He was the golden hero boy who saved the world from evil, not become it himself.

At last, the fire was ready, and they had just started cooking eggs and sausages when Bill, Charlie, and Percy came strolling out of the woods toward them.

"Just Apparated, Dad," Percy announced loudly, "Ah, excellent, lunch!"

They were halfway through their plates of eggs and sausages when Mr. Weasley jumped to his feet, waving and grinning at a man who was striding toward them.

"Aha!" he said. "The man of the moment! Ludo!"

Ludo Bagman was easily the most noticeable person Harry had seen so far, even including the old man named Archie that had passed a few minutes ago in his flowered nightdress. Ludo Bagman was wearing long Quidditch robes in thick horizontal stripes of bright yellow and black. An enormous picture of a wasp was splashed across his chest. He had the look of a powerfully built man gone slightly to seed; the robes were stretched tightly across a large belly he surely had not had in the days when he had played Quidditch for England. His nose was squashed. Probably broken by a stray Bludger, Harry thought. But his round blue eyes, short blond hair, and rosy complexion made him look like a very overgrown schoolboy.

"Ahoy there!" Bagman called out to them happily. He was walking as though he had springs attached to the balls of his feet and was plainly in a state of wild excitement.

"Arthur, old man," he puffed as he reached the campfire, "what a day, eh? What a day! Could we have asked for more perfect weather? A cloudless night coming, and hardly a hiccough in the arrangements… Not much for me to do!" Behind him, a group of haggard-looking Ministry wizards rushed past, pointing at the distant evidence of some sort of a magical fire that was sending violet sparks twenty feet into the air.

Percy hurried forward with his hand outstretched. Apparently his disapproval of the way Ludo Bagman ran his department did not prevent him from wanting to make a good impression on the man.

"Ah yes," Mr. Weasley grinned as he clasped a hand on his son's shoulder, "this is my son Percy. He's just started at the Ministry. And this is Fred — no, George, sorry — that's Fred. Over here are Bill, Charlie, and Ron. There is my daughter, Ginny. And over there are Ron's friends, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter." Bagman did the smallest of double takes when he heard Harry's name, and his eyes performed the familiar flick upward to the scar on Harry's forehead. "Everyone," Mr. Weasley continued, "this is Ludo Bagman, you know who he is, it's thanks to him we've got such good tickets."

Bagman beamed and waved his hand as if to say it had been nothing. "Fancy a flutter on the match, Arthur?" he said eagerly, jingling what seemed to be a large amount of gold in the pockets of his yellow-and-black robes, "I've already got Roddy Pontner betting me Bulgaria will score first. I offered him nice odds, considering Ireland's front three are the strongest I've seen in a good few years. And little Agatha Timms has put up half shares in her eel farm on a week-long match."

"Oh… go on then," Mr. Weasley laughed awkwardly, waving his friend off while digging into his pockets, "Let's see… a Galleon on Ireland to win?"

"A Galleon?" Ludo Bagman looked slightly disappointed, but recovered himself instantly, "Very well, very well… any other takers?"

"They're a bit young to be gambling," Mr. Weasley said with a minute flinch, "Molly wouldn't like—"

"What do you say, Ron?" Harry asked aloud, making everyone turn to him as he went through his pouch, "How much?"

"Harry, mate, you can't be serious!" Ron's eyes were as wide as saucers, knowing just how much money Harry carried around in is sack. All Galleons and never anything less.

"I want to experience everything while I'm here!" Harry smiled, sure that this crazy action would take Hermione and Ron's minds off his unusual behavior earlier. They might even think this was connected and that Harry was just trying to take in all the new things the Quidditch World Cup had to offer. He could probably even blame a bad toffee or something Draco had given him on their little Marluxia/Xemnas-episode over the blond.

"Well, while Harry figures out how to count his coppers," Fred grinned as he and George quickly pooled all their money, "Me and Gred here bet thirty-seven Galleons, fifteen Sickles, and… _three_ Knuts that Ireland wins — _but_ with the stipulation that Viktor Krum gets the Snitch."

"Oh and we'll throw in a fake wand." George added to their coins, but handed the fake wand to Bagman.

"You don't want to go showing Mr. Bagman rubbish like that —" Percy hissed, but Bagman didn't seem to think the wand was rubbish at all; on the contrary, his boyish face shone with excitement as he took it from George, and when the wand gave a loud squawk and turned into a rubber chicken, Bagman roared with laughter.

"Excellent, excellent! I haven't seen a rubbish wand this convincing in years! I'd pay five Galleons for it!"

Percy froze in an attitude of stunned disapproval.

"Boys," Mr. Weasley said under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index fingers, "I don't want you betting all your savings… It _is_ all your savings, isn't it? Oh Merlin, when your _mother_ finds out—"

"Don't be a spoilsport, Arthur!" Bagman boomed, rattling his pockets excitedly. "They're old enough to know what they want! You reckon Ireland will win, but Krum'll get the Snitch? Not a chance, boys, not a chance… Let's see, I'll give you excellent odds on that one. How about we add five Galleons for the funny wand, then, shall we… Oh, wait, Mr. Potter!" Mr. Weasley looked on helplessly as Ludo Bagman whipped out a notebook and quill and began jotting down the twins' names before whirling on heel to stare at Harry, who was now done counting out what he wanted to bet. It was a sizeable amount, but the sack still looked fat and happy.

"A whole sum of forty Galleons with the twins." Harry said, watching as jaws dropped all around him. All except Fred and George, who were whooping and cheering as they danced around Harry like little imps.

"Very good, very good. Faith in friendship, and all that! Excellent indeed, Harry my boy! I can call you Harry, correct, Mr. Potter?" he peered excitedly at Harry, who nodded.

"Only if I can call you Ludo." Harry said, shaking the man's hand, or more correctly; getting his arm wrung out like a wet sponge, "After all, sir, you're about to help make me and the twins very happy with the World Cup."

"Of course, of course!" Bagman turned to Mr. Weasley grinning broadly while Mr, Weasley looked as though his wife were at his back with her trusty frying pan, "The confidence on this one, Arthur!"

"Please just go now, Ludo, before the others get crazy thoughts into their heads…" Mr. Weasley said with exasperation.

"Cheers," George said, taking the slip of parchment Bagman handed him and tucking it away carefully. Harry placed his in his jean pocket while nodding to the man who grinned back at him.

Bagman then turned most cheerfully back to Mr. Weasley.

"Couldn't do me a brew before I go, I suppose? I'm keeping an eye out for Barty Crouch. My Bulgarian opposite number's making difficulties, and I can't understand a word he's saying. Barty'll be able to sort it out. He speaks about a hundred and fifty languages."

"Mr. Crouch?" Percy squeaked, suddenly abandoning his look of poker-stiff disapproval and positively writhing with excitement, "He speaks over two hundred! Mermish and Gobbledegook and Troll and—"

"Anyone can speak Troll," Fred waved it off dismissively, "All you have to do is point and grunt." Percy threw Fred an extremely nasty look and stoked the fire vigorously to bring the kettle back to boil.

"Any news of Bertha Jorkins yet, Ludo?" Mr. Weasley asked as Bagman settled himself down on the grass beside them all.

"Not a dicky bird," Bagman said comfortably, "But she'll turn up. Poor old Bertha… memory like a leaky cauldron and no sense of direction. Lost, you take my word for it. She'll wander back into the office sometime in October, thinking that it's still July."

"You think it might be time to send someone to look for her, don't you?" Mr. Weasley suggested tentatively as Percy handed Bagman his tea.

"Barty Crouch keeps saying that," Bagman said, his round eyes widening innocently, "but we really can't spare anyone at the moment. Oh look — talk of the devil! Barty! Over here! Barty!"

A wizard had just Apparated at their fireside, and he could not have made more of a contrast with Ludo Bagman, sprawled on the grass in his old Wasp robes. Barty Crouch was a stiff, upright, elderly man, dressed in an impeccably crisp suit and tie. The parting in his short gray hair was almost unnaturally straight, and his narrow toothbrush mustache looked as though he trimmed it using a slide rule. His shoes were very highly polished. Harry could see at once why Percy idolized this man. Percy was a great believer in rigidly following rules, and Mr. Crouch had complied with the rule about Muggle dressing so thoroughly that he could have passed for a bank manager. Harry doubted even his Uncle Vernon would have spotted him for what he really was. Harry would even go so far as to think that he if actually got the two to sit down together, Mr. Crouch could very well reverse Uncle Vernon's opinion on wizards completely.

"Pull up a bit of grass, Barty," Ludo said brightly, patting the ground beside him.

"No thank you, Ludo," Crouch replied with a bite of impatience in his voice. "I've been looking for you everywhere. The Bulgarians are insisting we add another twelve seats to the Top Box."

"Oh, is that what they've been after?" Bagman threw his hands into the air, letting blades of grass fly into the fire, "I thought the chap was asking to borrow a pair of tweezers. Bit of a strong accent, that one."

"Mr. Crouch!" Percy said breathlessly, sunk into a kind of half-bow that made him look like a hunchback. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Oh," Mr. Crouch looked over at Percy in mild surprise, "Yes, that'd be agreeable. Thank you, Weatherby."

Fred and George choked into their own cups. Percy, very pink around the ears, busied himself with the kettle.

"Oh and I've been wanting a word with you too, Arthur," Mr. Crouch said, his sharp eyes falling upon Mr. Weasley with some akin to pity for what he was about to bring up, "Ali Bashir's on the warpath. He wants a word with you about your embargo on flying carpets."

Mr. Weasley heaved a deep sigh, "I sent him an owl about that just last week. If I've told him once I've told him a hundred times: Carpets are defined as a Muggle Artifact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects, but will he listen?"

"I doubt it," Mr. Crouch sighed as well, accepting a cup from Percy, "He's desperate to export here."

"Well, they'll never replace brooms in Britain, will they?" Bagman added in his thoughts on the topic, rolling onto his back and looking up at his two workmates upside-down.

"Ali thinks there's a niche in the market for a family vehicle," Mr. Crouch said, not at all surprised by Ludo's boyish grass play, "I remember my grandfather had an Axminster that could seat twelve. But that was before carpets were banned, of course." He eyed the present company, speaking as though to leave no one in doubt that all his family and ancestors abided strictly by the law.

"So, been keeping busy, Barty?" Bagman asked breezily.

"Fairly," Mr. Crouch shot back dryly, "I've had the pleasure of organizing Portkeys across five continents. Something that I'll remind you, Ludo, is no mean feat."

"I expect you'll both be glad when this is over?" Mr. Weasley said gently as Ludo Bagman looked shocked, getting up to his knees in a hurry.

"Glad!? Don't know when I've had more fun! Still, it's not as though we haven't got anything to look forward to, eh, Barty? Eh? Plenty left to organize, eh?" Ludo wiggled his eyebrows at his companion. Mr. Crouch raised his eyebrows at Bagman.

"Ludo, have a mind for once in your life. We agreed not to make the announcement until all the details—"

"Oh details, details!" Bagman spat, waving the word away like a cloud of gnats, "They've signed, haven't they? They've agreed, haven't they? I bet you anything these kids'll know soon enough anyway. I mean, it's happening at Hogwarts—"

"Ludo, we need to meet the Bulgarians, you know," Mr. Crouch cut in sharply, cutting Bagman's remarks short. "Thank you for the tea, Weatherby." He pushed his untouched tea back at Percy and waited for Ludo to rise to his feet. Bagman struggled to his feet, swigging down the last of his tea, the gold in his pockets chinking merrily.

"See you all later!" he said cheerily, "You'll be up in the Top Box with me — I'm commentating!"

Ludo Bagman waved, Barty Crouch nodded curtly, and both of them Apparated on the spot.

"What's happening at Hogwarts, Dad?" Fred asked as soon as the two men were gone, "What were they talking about?"

"You'll find out soon enough," answered, smiling the mischievous smile that made even Fred and George feel uneasy, "Wouldn't want to ruin your surprise, now would we?"

"And it's classified information anyhow until such time as the Ministry decides to release it," Percy snapped stiffly. "Mr. Crouch was quite right not to disclose it."

"Oh shut up, Weatherby," Fred snarled. The others chuckled a little, making Percy grow red to the roots of his hair. Harry smiled in the background, his eyes darkening as he took in Percy's humiliation.

Reinforcement to the weakest link will always gain the strongest advantage when building your organization, Harry thought as he watched Percy with frosty emerald eyes.

Oh yes, Percy would do perfectly…

* * *

Draco Malfoy was by no means weak or a pushover. When Potter had captured him and restored the essence of his Nobody, he was relieved to be half-whole again. The torture of that accursed Limbo was boring and had nearly driven Marluxia insane with its never-ending blankness. However, he would have never believed he would be returned to the universe again as the subject of Xemnas' lordship.

Fate had cheated him once again from his rightful place atop the world…

Nevertheless, he was glad to be free of his ever blank prison. If he was made to suffer the presence of the Superior of the In-Between a while longer, then Draco as he was now would suffer with a grin. It also helped that Xemnas was now Harry Potter, and the two personalities came together to deprive Xemnas of his cruelty and Potter of his righteousness.

This was the vein on which Draco found many of his thoughts focusing upon.

Being the founder of Organization XIII and the oldest of all the Nobodies, Xemnas had always been truly emotionless in every sense of the word. He had once admitted to them that he could not even recall what it was like to have any feelings. Even Marluxia had remembered what it was to have a heart. To feel joy and sorrow, rage and misery. But Xemnas was a true monster, claiming that his lack of feelings allowed him to have a clear understanding of the heart.

Draco shivered as he remembered seeing a spark of the old Xemnas in Harry Potter. That lack of emotion in his cold unfeeling eyes, depriving him of remorse for his actions, as well as the loss of the innocence in Draco Malfoy's soul. He would forever be tainted with the essence of Nothingness, eternally damned to a fate less fulfilled. This caused Draco to stop shivering in fear and to once again tremble in righteous anger. The only thing Potter cared about at the moment was reestablishing his old society of Nobodies and whatever aims that went beyond that.

Unlike the other members of the Organization, Xemnas had basked in the power of Nothingness. To him, the greatest of them all, it was the sheer source of his powers and their powers through him. Unlike them, Xemnas had not despised Nothingness in the slightest.

But now was gone the tones of calmness and deep authority. Harry Potter was rarely as overly melodramatic as Xemnas was, and so far there had been not a single long-winded speech whereas the original Xemnas would have at least seven so far. One to tell Draco off about following him. The second to explain the dangers of the Corridors of Darkness. The third would have emphasized the hopelessness of Draco challenging him "the way he was only mortal instead of half-whole". Xemnas' fourth speech would most likely have come when Harry Potter had converted him back into Marluxia, this one would have been complete with those stupid wide sweeping arm movements and hand gestures. The fifth would have been to establish that Marluxia was still far beneath him, and that he was but a pawn in his schemes, like many villains said to their group members. The sixth and seventh speeches would be to explain how they would so easily fool Granger and Weasley, and then about how easily fooled they were.

But gone now were the ridiculous mannerisms that stemmed from his severe lack of emotion. Harry Potter, the Xenmas of present, was full of emotion and empathy for others. True, toward Draco he was dark and unyielding, to in the presence of his friends he mostly withdrew the fury and betrayed feelings he still cared around in order to appear as forgiving as possible for the benefit of his own plans. He was very intelligent, overall, and still as manipulative as ever, but now this mean streak of villainy was tempered greatly by his unfailing kindness and ability to love. Whether Potter knew this or not mattered little to Draco, because for the moment it was his only safeguard from being obliterated painfully and then brought right back for the cycle to repeat itself for however long it would amuse the emerald-eyed ruler of Nobodies.

Draco was sure that he was nowhere near powerful enough at the moment to attempt another rebellion against his superior, but also knew that his position right now was very valued. He was the only other revived member of the organization, and so Harry had to trust him to act on his own for the moment. There was also the fact that only Harry could transform others into Nobodies, given that Draco had tried to turn his father into Vexen the first chance he got within arm's length of his paternal role-model.

So while Harry planned and schemes their next move, Draco could focus on ways to keep his sub-leader position.

Especially should that fool Saix be revived any time soon…

Exiting his family tent, and kicking away the family peacock, Draco sneered at the sense of excitement that rose like a palpable cloud over the campsite. By dusk, the still summer air itself seemed to be quivering with anticipation, and as darkness spread like a curtain over the thousands of waiting wizards, the last vestiges of pretense disappeared. The Ministry officials seemed to have bowed to the inevitable and stopped fighting the signs of blatant magic now breaking out everywhere. Salesmen were Apparating every few feet, carrying trays and pushing carts full of their inexpensively pedestrian merchandise.

Draco, being half-whole once more as Marluxia, found the wizards of this world to be very mediocre and trivial in their society. Instead of looking toward other worlds with ideas of conquering and colonizing, these magicians belittled the powers they possessed by isolating themselves and trying to find peace within a society that feared them. Draco did not care for fear to toward the weak. Xemnas was someone to fear. Powerless mortals were not. If Draco ruled over the wizards, he would have long since annihilated the sheepish muggles of the world and then expanded his domain toward the other worlds he knew were out there among the stars.

There were vendors selling one of two luminous emblems — green for Ireland, red for Bulgaria. The rosettes squealed the names of the players. Pointed green hats bedecked with shamrocks danced gleefully. Bulgarian scarves adorned with lions really roared. Flags from both countries played their national anthems as they were waved. There were tiny models of Firebolts that really flew. Collectible figures of famous players, which strolled across the palm of your hand, preening themselves.

"Been saving my coppers all summer for this!" a boy rushed past Draco as he strolled through the salesmen, surveying souvenirs. The boy was talking with his friends, a dancing shamrock hat on his head while his female friend had a large red rosette pinned to her blouse.

Glancing backward a little, Draco caught sight of Harry Potter and his two friends, Granger and Weasley. Walking across Weasley's open palm was a small figure of Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian Seeker. The miniature Krum walked backward and forward over Ron's hand, scowling up at the green rosette above him. Potter was hurrying over to a cart piled high with what appeared to be brass Omnioculars. They were like binoculars, except that they were covered with all sorts of knobs and dials that could replay action, slow everything down, or flash up a play-by-play breakdown if needed. Weasley gestured to his dancing hat, but Potter smiled broadly at him and Granger before purchasing all three sets of Omnioculars. Draco smiled harshly when he saw the shade of red Weasley went as Potter handed him the item.

The poor, poor Weasleys…

But then Draco scowled. His money flashing and generous nature might have been enough to divert Granger and Weasley's attention from his concealed nefariousness, but Draco now knew Potter better than anyone. He might not be completely evil and detached as he was as Xemnas, but that didn't make him a non-opportunist. Weasley and Granger were perfect candidates for alteration into members of the organization.

He was always an astute observer, and knew that the two of Potter's closest friends would not be called into question for any odd behavior they would begin to share with Potter should he convert them. Like chilling the perimeter of Hogwarts' Great Hall with the draught of the Nothingness. No one would give the trio of Gryffindors a second glance if they started shying even further away from public. Draco would bet his family's fortune that at least Granger would be rehabilitated into one of their number.

The only question at this point to Draco was: When would Potter make his shadowy lunge at their throats?

* * *

Their money bags considerably lighter, Harry and his friends returned to tents. Bill, Charlie, and Ginny were all sporting green rosettes too, and Mr. Weasley was carrying an Irish flag. Fred and George had no souvenirs as they had given Bagman all their gold. Harry smiled widely as he gave them both the rosettes he had bought for them. They grinned at him, taking the two emblems with pride.

A deep, booming gong sounded somewhere beyond the woods, and at once, green and red lanterns blazed into life in the trees, lighting a path to the field.

"It's time!" Mr. Weasley squealed, looking as excited as any of them, "Come on, let's go!"

"Seats a hundred thousand!" Mr. Weasley said as he led the way. Clutching their purchases, they all hurried into the woods along the lantern-lit trail.

Harry could hear the sounds of thousands of people moving around them, shouts and laughter, snatches of singing. The atmosphere of feverish excitement was highly infectious; Harry almost couldn't stop grinning. As Xemnas he had only showed such glee when mocking the emotions of Somebodies in satirical fashion. Now that he possessed a heart and feelings, he was full of joyful vitality, like the high of his emotions would convert to energy and burst from his body in a beautiful explosion of happiness.

They walked through the woods for twenty minutes, talking and joking loudly, until at last they emerged on the other side and found themselves in the shadow of a gigantic stadium. Though Harry could see only a fraction of the immense gold walls surrounding the field, he could tell that that it rivaled his castle devoted to the oblivion in sheer size alone. And that the depth of it was nothing short of the deepness found in the Ruin and Creation's Passage.

"Ministry task force of five hundred have been working on it all year. Muggle Repelling Charms on every inch of it. Every time Muggles have got anywhere near here all year, they've suddenly remembered urgent appointments elsewhere." The Weasley patriarch added fondly, leading the way toward the nearest entrance, which was already surrounded by a swarm of shouting witches and wizards.

"Prime seats!" the Ministry witch cried at the entrance when she checked their tickets. "Top Box! Straight upstairs, Arthur, and as high as you can go."

The stairs into the stadium were carpeted in rich purple. They clambered upward with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filtered away through doors into the stands to their left and right. Their party kept climbing, and at last they reached the top of the staircase and found themselves in a small box, set at the highest point of the stadium and situated exactly halfway between the golden goal posts.

About twenty purple-and-gilt chairs stood in two rows here, and Harry, filing into the front seats with the Weasleys, looked down upon a scene the likes of which he could scarcely imagined. A hundred thousand witches and wizards were taking their places in the seats, which rose in levels around the long oval field. Never in his life, this one or the last, had Harry seen so many people gathered in one place. He had commanded over a thousand Nobodies, and a few hundred Heartless at one time or another, but never the tens upon hundreds of thousands like the number of witches and wizards who were seating themselves for this most grand festivity.

Everything was saturated with an enigmatic golden light, which seemed to come from the stadium itself. The field looked smoother than velvet from their lofty position. At either end of the field stood three golden goal hoops that were fifty feet high. And right opposite them, almost at Harry's eye level, was a gigantic blackboard. Gold writing kept dashing across it as though an invisible giant's hand were scrawling upon the blackboard and then wiping it off again. Watching this occur, Harry saw that it was flashing advertisements across the field.

Harry looked over his shoulder to see who else would be sharing the box with them. So far it was empty, except for a tiny creature sitting in the second from last seat at the end of the row behind them. The creature, whose legs were so short they stuck out in front of it on the chair, was wearing a tea towel draped like a toga, and it had its face hidden in its hands.

Yet those long, bat-like ears were oddly familiar…

"Dobby?" Harry called out incredulously. The tiny creature looked up and stretched its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact size and shape of a large tomato.

This being was not Dobby, but unmistakably a house-elf. In fact, thinking about it made Harry laugh a bit as he thought about his escapades in setting Dobby free from his old owners, the Malfoy family. And now Draco Malfoy served Harry once more as he did in the past life.

"Did sir just call me Dobby?" the little elf squeaked curiously from between its fingers. Its voice was higher even than Dobby's had been, a teeny, quivering squeak of a voice, and Harry suspected that this elf might be female, though it was difficult to tell with a house-elf. Ron and Hermione spun around in their seats to look. Though they had heard a lot about Dobby from Harry, they had never actually met him. Even Mr. Weasley looked around in interest.

"Sorry," Harry apologized honestly to the elf where Xemnas would have simply taken the elf's heart and left, "I just thought you were someone I knew."

"Oh, but I knows Dobby too, sir!" the she-elf squeaked, shielding her face as though blinded by light, even though the Top Box was not brightly lit. "My name is Winky, sir… And you, sir—" her dark brown eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as they rested upon Harry's scar. "You is surely Harry Potter sir!"

"Yes, that I am," Harry smiled politely.

"But Dobby talks of you all the time, sir!" she said, lowering her hands very slightly and looking awestruck.

"How is Dobby?" Harry asked, curious of his small friend's current conditions, "How is freedom suiting him?"

"Ah, sir," Winky sniffed, shaking her head, "ah sir, meaning no disrespect, sir, but I is not sure you did Dobby a favor, sir, when you is setting him free."

"Oh," Harry uttered, clearly taken back by her words, "And why would you say that? What's wrong with him?"

"Freedom is going to Dobby's head, sir," Winky said sadly, shaking her head again, "Ideas above his station, sir. Can't get another position, sir."

"Why not?" Hermione chimed in, clearly interested in the topic of Dobby. Ron looked vaguely uncomfortable beside her.

Winky lowered her voice by a half-octave and whispered, "He is wanting paying for his work, sir."

"Pay, you say?" Harry asked blankly. "And I'm guessing you have some words on the matter, aye?" Winky looked quite horrified at the idea of payment and closed her fingers slightly so that her face was half-hidden again.

"House-elves is not paid, sir!" she said in a muffled squeak, "No, no, no. I says to Dobby, I says, go find yourself a nice family and settle down, Dobby. He is getting up to all sorts of trouble, sir. Troubles is unbecoming to a house-elf. You goes racketing around like this, Dobby, I says, and next thing I hear you's up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, like some common goblin."

"Well, it's about time he had a bit of fun, Miss Winky," Harry pointed out, but Winky shivered terribly. Harry liked to think she was upset over his words and not the fact that he addressed her with respect. That was something Dobby would have punished himself for, and Harry didn't want to see a house-elf beat itself at such a sensational experience like the Quidditch World Cup.

"House-elves is not supposed to have fun, Harry Potter sir," Winky said firmly, from behind her hands. "House-elves does what they is told. I is not liking heights at all, Harry Potter," she glanced toward the edge of the box and gulped, "but my master sends me to the Top Box and I comes, sir."

"Why'd he send you up here, if he knew you don't like heights?" Hermione asked, frowning in a way that made her lips thin. It was a very McGonagall expression for her, and showed Harry more of her future than any Divination class he had been through last year.

"Master — Master wants me to save him a seat. He is very busy," Winky tilted her head toward the empty space beside her. "Winky is wishing she is back in master's tent, Harry Potter, but Winky does what she is told. Winky is a good house-elf." She gave the edge of the box another frightened look and hid her eyes completely again. Harry turned back to the others and they all did the same, looking forward as they huddled together for a talk.

"Weird little thing, ain't she?" Ron muttered, pulling out his Omnioculars and testing them. He stared down into the crowd on the other side of the stadium. Hermione, meanwhile, was skimming eagerly through her velvet-covered, tasseled program.

"Oh, see here! There's going to be a display from the team mascots that will precede the match," she told them all aloud.

"Oh that's always worth watching," Mr. Weasley said with a smile, "National teams bring creatures from their native land, you know, to put on a bit of a show."

"Wild!" Ron said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. "I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again… and again… and again…"

* * *

Their box began to be filled gradually around them over the next half hour.

Mr. Weasley kept shaking hands with people who were obviously very important wizards. Percy jumped to his feet so often that he looked as though he were trying to sit on a bed of spikes. When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic himself, arrived, Percy bowed so low that his glasses fell off and shattered. Highly embarrassed, he took out his wand, but the Minister laughed and before Percy could act, had repaired Percy's glasses with a flick of his own wand and levitated them back to him. Percy's face was as red as his hair, but the Minister began a story on how his own glasses always fell off and then about how he got his eyesight magically fixed. Even while Fudge was talking, Percy threw jealous looks at Harry, whom Cornelius Fudge had greeted like an old friend and was the main one he would turn to during these stories. Harry had met Fudge before, so after Fudge's tales, the man shook his hand in a fatherly fashion, asked how he was, and introduced him to the wizards on either side of him.

"Harry Potter, you know," he told the Bulgarian minister loudly, who was wearing splendid robes of black velvet trimmed with gold and didn't seem to understand a word of English. Harry could tell better due to the fact that the man was following every word out of Minister Fudge's mouth and acting ignorant accordingly, "Harry Potter… Oh come on now, you know who he is… The boy who survived You-Know-Who," the Bulgarian flinched subtly by pretending to step back, yet Harry could feel his spike of fear, "You do know who _he_ is at least—" the Bulgarian wizard suddenly spotted Harry's scar and started gabbling loudly and excitedly, pointing at it.

"Knew we'd get there in the end," Fudge said wearily to Harry, who smiled accordingly with a wink at the Bulgarian Minister. The man smiled back at him, "I'm no great shakes at languages; I need Barty Crouch for this sort of thing. Personally hate the taste of those Language Lozenges and Phonology Potions. Right awful they are. Ah, and I see his house-elf's saving him a seat… Good job too, these Bulgarian blighters have been trying to nick all the best places… Ah, and here's Lucius!"

Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned quickly. Edging along the second row to three still-empty seats right behind Mr. Weasley were none other than Dobby the house-elf's former owners: Lucius Malfoy; his son, Draco; and a woman Harry supposed must be Draco's mother. His mother was blonde too; tall and slim, she would have been beautiful if not for the expression she wore that suggested there was an awful stench under her nose.

"Ah, Fudge," Mr. Malfoy said, holding out his hand as he reached the Minister of Magic, "How are you, old friend? I don't think you've met my wife, Narcissa? Or our son, Draco?"

"How do you do, how do you do?" Fudge said, smiling and bowing to Mrs. Malfoy, "And allow me to introduce you to Mr. Oblansk… or was it Obalonsk…? Ah, well, he's the Bulgarian Minister of Magic, and he can't understand a word I'm saying anyway, so never mind. And let's see who else — you know Arthur Weasley, I daresay?"

It was a tense moment. Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy looked at each other and Harry vividly recalled the last time they had come face-to-face: It had been in Flourish and Blotts' bookshop, and they had fought.

Mr. Malfoy's cold gray eyes swept over Mr. Weasley, and then up and down the row, "Good lord, Arthur," he said softly. "What did you have to sell to get seats in the Top Box? Surely your house wouldn't have fetched this much?"

Fudge, who wasn't listening, said, "Lucius has just given a very generous contribution to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Arthur. He's here as my guest."

"How very nice, Lucius." Mr. Weasley said easily, but had one at his face showed a very strained smile.

Mr. Malfoy's eyes had returned to Hermione, who went slightly pink, but stared determinedly back at him. Harry knew exactly what was making Mr. Malfoy's lip curl like that. The Malfoys prided themselves on being purebloods; in other words, they considered anything Muggle, like Hermione, second-rate at best. However, under the gaze of the Minister of Magic, Mr. Malfoy didn't dare say anything. He nodded sneeringly to Mr. Weasley and continued down the line to his seats. Draco shot Harry, Ron, and Hermione one apathetic look, then settled himself between his mother and father.

"Slimy gits," Ron muttered as he, Harry, and Hermione turned to face the field again.

* * *

Next moment, Ludo Bagman charged into the box. "Everyone ready?" he said, his round face gleaming like a great, excited Edam. "Minister — ready to go?"

"Ready when you are, Ludo," Fudge chuckled comfortably.

Ludo whipped out his wand, directed it at his own throat, and said "Sonorus!" and then spoke over the roar of sound that was now filling the packed stadium; his voice echoed over them, booming into every corner of the stands.

" **Ladies and gentlemen… Welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup**!"

The spectators below screamed and clapped. Thousands of flags waved, adding their discordant national anthems to the racket. The huge blackboard opposite them was wiped clear of its last message, and now showed BULGARIA: 0, IRELAND: 0.

" **And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce… the Bulgarian National Team Mascots**!"

The right-hand side of the stands, which was a solid block of scarlet, roared its approval.

"I wonder what they've brought," Mr. Weasley thought aloud, leaning forward in his seat.

"Aaah!" He suddenly whipped off his glasses and polished them hurriedly on his robes, "They've brought Veela!"

"What are veel—?" But a hundred veela were now gliding out onto the field, and Harry's question was answered for him.

Veela were women… The most beautiful women Harry had ever seen… Except, they weren't exactly human. Aside from the sixth sense he had gained from many years of magical experience in both lives, it was rather obvious that these extraordinary women were not what they seemed to be. What else could make their skin shine moon-bright like that? Or make their white-gold hair fan out behind them without wind?

But then the music started, and Harry stopped worrying about them not being human.

In fact, he stopped worrying about anything at all. The veela had started to dance, and Harry's mind had gone completely and blissfully blank. He watched them, and all that mattered now was seeing them sway their delectable bodies this way and that.

"Ron, what are you doing?" Harry asked, his friend blinking and freezing on spot at the sound of his voice. He was standing up, and one of his legs was resting on the wall of the box. He froze in an attitude that looked as though he were about to dive from a springboard.

All around angry yells were filling the stadium. The crowd didn't want the veela to go. Harry was with them, of course. These ladies were gifts direct from Kingdom Hearts itself.

Ron, meanwhile, was absentmindedly shredding the shamrocks on his hat. Mr. Weasley, smiling slightly, leaned over to Ron and tugged the hat out of his hands, "You'll be wanting that," he stated, "once Ireland have had their say."

"Huh?" Ron was staring openmouthed at the veela, who had now lined up along one side of the field. Hermione made a loud tutting noise. She reached up and pulled him back into his seat.

"Honestly, Ronald!" she said, clearly upset with his drooling open mouth and blank stare into the cleavage of one of the veela.

" **And now** ," roared Ludo Bagman's voice, " **kindly put your wands in the air… for the Irish National Team Mascots**!"

Next moment, what seemed to be a great green-and-gold comet came zooming into the stadium from the sky above. It did one circuit of the stadium, then split into two smaller comets, each hurtling toward the goal posts. A rainbow arced suddenly across the field, connecting the two balls of light. The crowd oooohed and aaaaahed, as though at a fireworks display. Now the rainbow faded and the balls of light re-united and merged; they had formed a great shimmering shamrock, which rose up into the sky and began to soar over the stands.

Something like golden rain seemed to be falling from it…

"Excellent!" Ron yelled abruptly as the shamrock soared over them, and heavy gold coins rained from it, bouncing off their heads and seats. Squinting up at the shamrock, Harry realized that it was actually comprised of thousands of tiny little bearded men with red vests, each carrying a minute lamp of gold or green.

"Leprechauns!?" Harry said over the tumultuous applause of the crowd, many of whom were still fighting and rummaging around under their chairs to retrieve the gold.

"There you go," Ron yelled happily, stuffing a fistful of gold coins into Harry's hand, "for the Omnioculars! Now you've got to buy me a Christmas present, ha ha!"

The great shamrock dissolved, the leprechauns drifted down onto the field on the opposite side from the veela, and settled themselves cross-legged to watch the match.

" **And now, ladies and gentlemen, kindly welcome — the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team**!"

"That's him, that's him!" Ron squealed, following Krum with his Omnioculars. Harry quickly focused his own. Viktor Krum was thin, dark, and sallow-skinned, with a large curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He looked like an over- grown bird of prey. It was hard to believe he was only eighteen.

" **And now, please greet — the Irish National Quidditch Team**!" yelled Bagman. Seven green blurs swept onto the field. Harry spun a small dial on the side of his Omnioculars and slowed the players down enough to read the word "Firebolt" on each of their brooms and see their names, embroidered in silver, upon their backs, " **And here, all the way from Egypt, our referee, acclaimed Chairwizard of the International Association of Quidditch, Hassan Mostafa**!" A small and skinny wizard, completely bald but with a mustache to rival Uncle Vernon's, wearing robes of pure gold to match the stadium, strode out onto the field. A silver whistle was protruding from under the mustache, and he was carrying a large wooden crate under one arm, his broomstick under the other.

Harry spun the speed dial on his Omnioculars back to normal, watching closely as Mostafa mounted his broomstick and kicked the crate open — four balls burst into the air: the scarlet Quaffle, the two black Bludgers, and the minuscule, winged Golden Snitch. Harry saw it for the briefest moment, before it sped out of sight.

With a sharp blast on his whistle, Mostafa shot into the air after the balls.

" **Annnnnd They're OFF**!" Bagman screamed, excitement filling the stadium as everyone watched the game start.

It was Quidditch as Harry had never seen it played before. He was pressing his Omnioculars so hard to his glasses that they were cutting into the bridge of his nose. The speed of the players was incredible — the Chasers were throwing the Quaffle to one another so fast that Bagman only had time to say their names. Harry spun the slow dial on the right of his Omnioculars again, pressed the play-by-play button on the top, and he was immediately watching in slow motion, while glittering purple lettering flashed across the lenses and the noise of the crowd pounded against his eardrums. _HAWKSHEAD ATTACKING FORMATION_ , he read as he watched the three Irish Chasers zoom closely together, one in the center, slightly ahead of the other two, bearing down upon the Bulgarians. _PORSKOFF PLOY_ flashed up next, as leader made as though to dart upward with the Quaffle, drawing away the Bulgarian Chaser and dropping the Quaffle to one of his followers. One of the Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov, swung hard at a passing Bludger with his small club, knocking it into Moran's path; Moran ducked to avoid the Bludger and dropped the Quaffle; and Levski, soaring beneath, caught it—

" **TROY SCORES**!" Bagman roared, and the stadium shuddered with a roar of applause and cheers. " **Ten zero to Ireland**!"

"What?" Harry yelled, looking wildly around through his Omnioculars, "But Levski's got the Quaffle!"

"Harry, if you're not going to watch at normal speed, you're going to miss things!" Hermione shouted, dancing up and down, waving her arms in the air while Troy did a lap of honor around the field.

Harry looked quickly over the top of his Omnioculars and saw that the leprechauns watching from the sidelines had all risen into the air again and formed the great, glittering shamrock. Across the field, the veela were watching them sulkily.

Furious with himself, Harry spun his speed dial back to normal as play resumed. Harry knew enough about Quidditch to see that the Irish Chasers were superb. They worked as a seamless team, their movements so well coordinated that they appeared to be reading one another's minds as they positioned themselves. The rosette on Harry's chest kept squeaking their names: " _Troy — Mullet — Moran_!"

And within ten minutes, Ireland had scored twice more, bringing their lead to thirty-zero and causing a thunderous tidal wave of roars and applause from the green-clad supporters. The match became still faster, but more brutal. Volkov and Vulchanov, the Bulgarian Beaters, were whacking the Bludgers as fiercely as possible at the Irish Chasers, and were starting to prevent them from using some of their best moves; twice they were forced to scatter, and then, finally, Ivanova managed to break through their ranks; dodge the Keeper, Ryan; and score Bulgaria's first goal.

"Fingers in your ears!" Mr. Weasley bellowed as the veela started to dance in celebration. Harry watched with amusement as Ron screwed up his eyes too. He obviously wanted to keep his mind on the game. After a few seconds, the veela had stopped dancing, and Bulgaria was again in possession of the Quaffle.

" **Dimitrov! Levski! Dimitrov! Ivanova— Oh I say**!" roared Bagman.

One hundred thousand wizards gasped as the two Seekers, Krum and Lynch, plummeted through the center of the Chasers, so fast that it looked as though they had just jumped from airplanes without parachutes. Harry followed their descent through his Omnioculars, squinting to see where the Snitch was—

"They're going to crash!" Hermione screamed next to him. She was half right, because at the very last second, Viktor Krum pulled out of the dive and spiraled off. Lynch, however, hit the ground with a dull thud that could be heard throughout the stadium. A huge groan rose from the Irish seats.

"Fool!" Mr. Weasley moaned, throwing his hands into the air, "Krum was feinting!"

" **It's a time-out**!" Bagman's voice yelled, " **As trained medical wizards hurry onto the field to examine Aidan Lynch**!"

"He'll be okay, he only got ploughed!" Charlie said reassuringly to Ginny, who was hanging over the side of the box, looking horror-struck. "Which is what Krum was after, of course…"

Harry hastily pressed the replay and play-by-play buttons on his Omnioculars, twiddled the speed dial, and put them back up to his eyes. He watched as Krum and Lynch dived again in slow motion. _WRONSKI DEFENSIVE FEINT — DANGEROUS SEEKER DIVERSION_ read the shining purple lettering across his lenses. He saw Krum's face contorted with concentration as he pulled out of the dive just in time, while Lynch was flattened, and he understood. Krum hadn't seen the Snitch at all, he was just making Lynch copy him.

Harry had never seen anyone fly like that. Krum hardly looked as though he was using a broomstick at all. He moved so easily through the air that he looked unsupported and weightless.

Harry turned his Omnioculars back to normal and focused them on Krum. He was now circling high above Lynch, who was being revived by mediwizards with cups of potion. Harry, focusing still more closely upon Krum's face, saw his dark eyes darting all over the ground a hundred feet below. He was using the time while Lynch was revived to look for the Snitch without interference.

Lynch got to his feet at last, to loud cheers from the green-clad supporters, mounted his Firebolt, and kicked back off into the air. His revival seemed to give Ireland new heart. When Mostafa blew his whistle again, the Chasers moved into action with a skill unrivaled by anything Harry had seen so far. After fifteen more fast and furious minutes, Ireland had pulled ahead by ten more goals. They were now leading by one hundred and thirty points to ten, and the game was starting to get dirtier.

* * *

Draco was honestly starting to get bored with the Quidditch match until just then. As Mullet shot toward the goal posts yet again, clutching the Quaffle tightly under her arm, the Bulgarian Keeper, Zograf, flew out to meet her. Whatever happened was over so quickly Draco didn't catch it, but a scream of rage from the Irish crowd, and Mostafa's long, shrill whistle blast, told him it had been a foul.

" **And Mostafa takes the Bulgarian Keeper to task for cobbing — excessive use of elbows**!" Bagman informed the roaring spectators. " **And — yes, it's a penalty to Ireland**!"

The leprechauns, who had risen angrily into the air like a swarm of glittering hornets when Mullet had been fouled, now darted together to form the words "HA, HA, HA!"

The veela on the other side of the field leapt to their feet, tossed their hair angrily, and started to dance again. Draco watched with amusement as one, all the males of the box aside from himself and Harry stuffed their fingers into their ears. Harry looked back at him, and both shared a vicious smile at the expense on the people around them. These wizards were so weak against a little allure magic. They would have been puddy in Draco hands were he still at full power. True, that fool Sora had not been distracted by his charm, but his companions were drooling messes at the mere sight of him. Unlike the veela, Draco never had to dance for his charms to work a day in his former life.

"Look at the referee!" Draco heard Granger giggle to Harry in the silence of the veela's dance. Draco, along with Harry, looked down at the field. Hassan Mostafa had landed right in front of the dancing veela, and was flexing his muscles and smoothing his mustache excitedly.

" **Now, we can't have that**!" Ludo Bagman said, though he sounded highly amused, " **Somebody slap the referee**!"

A mediwizard came tearing across the field, his fingers stuffed into his own ears, and kicked Mostafa hard in the shins. Mostafa seemed to come to himself. Draco, not using his Omnioculars, but instead sheer power to enhance his vision to the heights of unimaginable clarity, saw that Mostafa looked exceptionally embarrassed and had started shouting at the veela, who had stopped dancing and were looking mutinous.

" **And unless I'm much mistaken, Mostafa is actually attempting to send off the Bulgarian team mascots**!" came Bagman's voice, " **Now there's something we haven't seen before… Oh this could turn nasty…** "

And it did, much to Draco's giddy delight. The Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov and Vulchanov, landed on either side of Mostafa and began arguing furiously with him, gesticulating toward the leprechauns, who had now gleefully formed the words "HEE, HEE, HEE." Mostafa was not impressed by the Bulgarians' arguments, however; he was jabbing his finger into the air, clearly telling them to get flying again, and when they refused, he gave two short blasts on his whistle.

" **Two penalties for Ireland**!" Bagman shouted joyfully, and the Bulgarian crowd howled with anger. " **And Volkov and Vulchanov had better get back on those brooms… Yes, there they go… and Troy takes the Quaffle** …"

Play now reached a level of ferocity beyond anything Draco had yet seen in Quidditch. The Beaters on both sides were acting without mercy. Volkov and Vulchanov in particular seemed not to care whether their clubs made contact with Bludger or human as they swung them violently through the air. Dimitrov shot straight at Moran, who had the Quaffle, nearly knocking her off her broom.

"FOUL!" roared the Irish supporters as one, all standing up in a great wave of green.

" **Foul**!" echoed Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice, " **Dimitrov skins Moran — deliberately flying to collide there — and it's got to be another penalty. Yes, there's the whistle**!"

The leprechauns had risen into the air again, and this time, they formed a giant hand, which was making a very rude sign indeed at the veela across the field. At this, the veela lost control. Instead of dancing, they launched themselves across the field and began throwing handfuls of fire at the leprechauns. Watching this made Draco scowl in disgust at them. They were beautiful creatures, but at the moment they weren't behaving even remotely beautiful now. When Potter took this world and plunged it into Darkness, Draco would be sure to collect the veela and reeducate them on beauty the hard way. They could even have the honor of attending to him as his forever servants once they had learned to always stay proper in the face of simple taunting.

"And that, my son," Lucius said, gripping Draco's shoulder tightly, "is why we do not associate ourselves with magical creatures, even those like the Veela. Beautiful though they are when calm."

Calm they were not at the moment. Nor were they beautiful either, Draco added to himself. On the contrary, their faces were elongating into sharp, cruel-beaked bird heads, and long, scaly wings were bursting from their shoulders.

Ministry wizards were flooding onto the field to separate the veela and the leprechauns, but with little success; meanwhile, the pitched battle below was nothing to the one taking place above. Draco's eyes darted this way and that, following as the Quaffle changed hands with the speed of a bullet.

" **Levski — Dimitrov — Moran — Troy — Mullet — Ivanova — Moran again — Moran — MORAN SCORES**!" But the cheers of the Irish supporters were barely heard over the shrieks of the veela, the blasts now issuing from the Ministry members' wands, and the furious roars of the Bulgarians. The game recommenced immediately; now Levski had the Quaffle, now Dimitrov.

The Irish Beater Quigley swung heavily at a passing Bludger, and hit it as hard as possible toward Krum, who did not duck quickly enough. It hit him full in the face. There was a deafening groan from the crowd; Krum's nose looked broken, there was blood everywhere, but Hassan Mostafa didn't blow his whistle. He had become distracted, and Draco could not quite blame him. One of the veela had thrown a fireball and set his broom tail alight.

It reminded Draco to cleave Axel in two once the man was revived for his betrayal in the end, and for setting fire to his garden exactly one month before said treachery.

"Time-out! Ah, come on, he can't play like that, look at him—" Weasley was yelling, his hair flaring out as he obviously felt that someone should realize the player Krum was injured. Draco was, for once in life, in agreement with the scum of society. Krum was easily the most exciting player on the field.

"Look at Lynch!" Harry yelled, and Draco and Weasley turned as one to the Irish Seeker's position; one with Omnioculars, and the other using powers beyond wizardly comprehension.

The Irish Seeker had suddenly gone into a dive, and Draco was quite sure that this was no feint; this was the real thing…

"He's seen the Snitch!" Harry shouted, and Draco cringed as he was sure that Xemnas was genuinely as excited as a six year-old at this point of the game, "He's seen it! Look at him go!"

Half the crowd seemed to have realized what was happening; the Irish supporters rose in another great wave of green, screaming their Seeker on… but Krum was fast upon his broom tail. How the roguish teenager could see where he was going, Draco had nary a clue as there were flecks of blood flying through the air behind him. But still, Krum was drawing level with Lynch now as the pair of them hurtled toward the ground again.

"They're going to crash!" Granger shrieked.

"They're not!" Weasley roared.

"Lynch is!" Potter yelled, up on his feet while Draco's fear and respect for his powerful leader dwindled just a bit. But even so, Harry was right — for the second time, Lynch hit the ground with tremendous force and was immediately stampeded by a horde of angry veela.

Yes, Draco smiled evilly. He was greatly enjoying the game now.

* * *

"The Snitch, where's the bloody Snitch?" Charlie bellowed, along the row with his family, Hermione and Harry.

"He's got it! Krum's got it! It's all over!" Harry shouted. And as unclothed as it was for someone who had once upon a time been a maniacal villain bent on ruling the universe through the power of Kingdom Hearts, Harry started jumping up and down with wild applause like a four year-old needing the loo.

Krum, his red robes shining with blood from his nose, was rising gently into the air, his fist held high, a glint of gold in his hand.

The scoreboard was flashing BULGARIA: 160, IRELAND: 170 across the crowd, who didn't seem to have realized what had happened. Then, slowly, as though a great jumbo jet were revving up, the rumbling from the Ireland supporters grew louder and louder and erupted into screams of delight.

" **IRELAND WINS**!" Bagman shouted, who like the Irish, seemed to be taken aback by the sudden end of the match. " **KRUM GETS THE SNITCH — BUT IRELAND WINS — good lord, I don't think any of us were expecting that**!"

"What did he catch the Snitch for?" Ron bellowed, even as he jumped up and down, applauding with his hands over his head, "He ended it when Ireland were a hundred and sixty points ahead, the idiot!"

"Ha! He knew they were never going to catch up!" Harry shouted back over all the noise, still clapping loudly even as the palms of his hands were an angry shade of red, "The Irish Chasers were too good… He wanted to end it on his own terms, that's all."

"He was very brave, wasn't he?" Hermione said, leaning forward to watch Krum land as a swarm of mediwizards blasted a path through the battling leprechauns and veela to get to him. "He looks a terrible mess, though…"

Harry put his Omnioculars to his eyes again. It was hard to see what was happening below, because leprechauns were zooming delightedly all over the field, but he could just make out Krum, surrounded by mediwizards. He looked surlier than ever and refused to let them mop him up. His team members were around him, shaking their heads and looking dejected.

A short way away, the Irish players were dancing gleefully in a shower of gold descending from their mascots. Flags were waving all over the stadium, the Irish national anthem blared from all sides.

The veela were shrinking back into their usual, beautiful selves now, though looking dispirited and forlorn.

"Vell, ve fought bravely," said a gloomy voice behind Harry. He looked around; it was the Bulgarian Minister of Magic.

"You can speak English!" Fudge sounded deeply outraged, "And you've been letting me mime everything all day!"

"Vell, it vos very funny," the Bulgarian minister said with a casual shrug.

" **And as the Irish team performs a lap of honor, flanked by their mascots, the Quidditch World Cup itself is brought into the Top Box**!" Bagman roared as Harry's eyes were suddenly dazzled by a blinding white light. The Top Box was magically illuminated so that everyone in the stands could see the inside. Squinting toward the entrance, he saw two panting wizards carrying a vast golden cup into the box, which they handed to Cornelius Fudge, who was still looking very disgruntled that he'd been using sign language all day for nothing. " **Let's have a really loud hand for the gallant losers — Bulgaria**!" Bagman shouted.

Up the stairs into the box came the seven defeated Bulgarian players. The crowd below was applauding appreciatively. Harry could see thousands and thousands of Omniocular lenses flashing and winking in their direction. One by one, the Bulgarians filed between the rows of seats in the box, and Bagman called out the name of each as they shook hands with their own minister and then with Fudge. Krum, who was last in line, looked a real mess. Two black eyes were blooming spectacularly on his bloody face. He was still holding the Snitch. Harry noticed that he seemed much less coordinated on the ground. He was slightly duck-footed and distinctly round-shouldered. But when Krum's name was announced, the whole stadium gave him a resounding, earsplitting roar.

And then came the Irish team. Aidan Lynch was being supported by Moran and Connolly; the second crash seemed to have dazed him and his eyes looked strangely unfocused. But he grinned happily as Troy and Quigley lifted the Cup into the air and the crowd below thundered its approval. Harry's hands were now stinging and growing numb with clapping.

Bagman pointed his wand at his throat and muttered, "Quietus." At last, the Irish team had left the box to perform another lap of honor on their brooms. Aidan Lynchhad to be on the back of Connolly's broom, clutching hard around his waist and still grinning in a bemused sort of way.

"They'll be talking about this one for years," Ludo Bagman said hoarsely, "a really unexpected twist, that… But a great shame it couldn't have lasted longer…"

Fred and George had scrambled over the backs of their seats and were standing in front of Ludo Bagman with broad grins on their faces, their hands outstretched. Harry got up and went around, his own grin more like a predator than he would have liked thanks in part to the satisfaction he felt for coming out a winner in something that was only done to throw off suspicion. The three boys stood in front of Bagman, each with twinkling eyes as he gulped upon seeing them so soon.

"Ah yes… Umm, lets see… I owe you _how much_ , exactly?"

* * *

"So, oh grand ruler of the twilit emptiness," Draco drawled with listlessness as soon as he and Harry had slipped away from the crowds around them into the darkest patch of wood they could find. He could see Harry as clearly as if the emerald-eyed leader was standing in daylight, "What plans have you for your newfound wealth?"

"I've always had wealth, dear Marluxia." Harry stated, his voice crisp and firm. This was not Harry Potter, the all-around goodie-goodie talking to Draco, but instead the master of Nothingness, Xemnas. Harry dropped the façade of innocence as soon as Draco had touch his shoulder and gesture to lead him away. Draco feared that he would never be treated with a shred of innocence where Xemnas was concerned.

Sad, but necessary, Draco knew. He had been the one to betray the Organization, after all. He would have called Harry a fool and decapitated him by now if the man had overlooked that little fact in the face of revitalization.

"My parents saw to that before their untimely demise." Harry went on as though Draco had not flinched at his cool tone of voice. He didn't mean to be so cold with Draco, but the sting of betrayal took some time to heal.

In the past he could feel nothing for the flowery man's betray, just a vague sense that flickered away as soon as it had come. He had listened to Axel in the throne room, stared at the flame-haired berserker after his report of the events at Castle Oblivion, but did nothing more than blink once before telling his remaining Organization members about how they would still be known as Organization XII and would then be moving on to securing the Hollow Bastion site for the next step in their plans.

Now he could feel fury and the disloyalty done to him made him white hot with righteous anger. Harry liked to believe he had done a marvelous job of staying calm and passive in the face of their reunion. True, he had made Marluxia's revival far more painful and torturous than necessary, but who could say they wouldn't induce a little torture on the poisonous rose that spread treachery in their group?

But he would try to give Draco a fair shake from now on.

At least until he proved himself a dirty double-crosser again…

"Interesting to know," Draco was smiling now, the same arrogant grin Marluxia always wore when he was thinking something especially spiteful, "But what do you actually do with your money? I've never seen much of anything to suggest your wealth while we've attended the same school for the past three years."

"That's because some of us are more discreet than others," Harry threw back, smirking as Draco glared back at him for the hidden insult flung his way, "But that was before I became half-whole again. Now I have a slightly altered mindset… Now I have greater ambitions…"

"Please spare me your dramatics, and just get on with it." Draco was back to drawling in boredom, but Harry smiled all the same. He was being a little pompous, but he liked to think that the universe was his stage and he was the lead role.

"So be it. I will be using my wealth to garner supplies and other tokens for research." Harry informed the former assassin, who blinked at being filled in on any details at all. Draco honestly thought he would hear a speech about how he was a traitor and not privy to the new plans because of said fact.

"Are we going after Kingdom Hearts again?" Draco asked since Xemnas was in such a sharing mood. However, this time the superior's expression closed to one more reflective.

"I am… unsure." Harry admitted, "But while reviving our other fallen brethren, I will have time to dwell on that particular trail of thought. Until then, our main objective at the moment is to become thirteen once more."

"You mean you'll bring _all_ of us back?" Draco was blinking back his sheer shock at the fact that Harry would be enlivening all of their numbers. Even Larxene and Roxas were to be given a second chance?

"And perhaps even Namine and Xion." Harry tapped at his chin as he mulled over his half-formed plans and goals for the future. "All the important Nobodies should not be forced to dwell in Oblivion. Limbo, as from your experience, is a hellish existence of endless void. If they are all in agreement, I will pluck them from their personal hell and give them new life in the form of the already living."

Draco looked for a moment as though he was going to ask what that meant for him, but seemed to decide, whether upon reflection or self-preservation, that he didn't want to know just yet.

"So who will be our next victim?" Draco asked instead, and Harry smiled so inhumanly that Draco instinctively shifted back into the comforting blackness of the dark wood.

"That would be our dear, sweet Hermione Granger." Harry purred like a lion ready to kill, "She will become Saix's second chance at a new life."

* * *

An elderly man was looking up at the sky, watching as the starry sky that did not seem to reach the night-darkened wasteland with its beautiful light. This wilderness was empty save for the wind. The sky, however, was filled with thousands and thousands of stars. One of those stars seemed to glow brighter than all the rest, and then it slid through the sky, falling.

The old man had already known that tonight there would be falling stars. On each star dwelled a world. Stars falling meant the worlds were changing.

So which world out there was changing?

"What are you staring at out there, old man?" a boyish voice sneered. And his voice should be so young, as he was just that. A boy. A simple boy with hair as black as the darkness of night.

The old man turned back to the boy, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "There has been great change somewhere out in the universe. A star has fallen."

A glint took residence in the boy's eyes, as if he'd realized something, "You know I don't give a damn about any world out there," he grinned.

The old man also smiled, "Yes, but it would do you some good to take notice of the evolution around you. And what is evolution but the slow movement of change."

Held at the young man's side was a mask, "Still don't see what has you so cheery…"

"Perhaps I'm just in need of a little rest," the old man said, but the boy scoffed as if he didn't believe a word. The old man turned and began to walk away, his footfalls leaving behind prints in the virgin sand, "Come, we have an early morning tomorrow."

"I can go without sleep for a day or two," the boy grinned ferociously.

"Then guard me as I rest." The elder ordered, "A new chapter has opened in the story. It looks like the winds of change are revealing new pages to a tale thought to be done.

"New story…? Piece of cake," the kid answered back, putting on the mask he'd been holding while the old man scoffed only to glance back up at the stars.

Stars streaked across the sky.

One—two, three…


	5. All in the Name

**Chapter 5: All in the Name**

* * *

"Oh, am I glad it's not _me_ on duty," Mr. Weasley muttered sleepily, "I wouldn't fancy having to go and tell the Irish they've got to stop celebrating."

Harry smirked from his perch atop the bunk above Ron, staring up at the canvas ceiling of the tent. Harry watched the glow of an occasional leprechaun lantern flying overhead.

While all the others went asleep, Harry lay awake, itching to take his Firebolt out into the skies above and try out the Wronski Feint. Somehow Oliver Wood had never managed to convey to Harry, with all his wriggling diagrams, exactly what that move was supposed to look like.

Growing exceedingly restless, Harry made sure the others were asleep. Mr. Weasley was nowhere to be found, but that bothered Harry little. He slipped out of bed and then out of the room with nary a sound. Of course, Ron's snoring was the loudest thing in the room short of cannon fire. Sneaking out of their shared quarters was a piece of cake when his friend snored like the booming roar from a commanding Heartless.

Moving out of the living room was another matter. Fred and George were still awake, muttering over cups of steaming tea and half-eaten crumpets about their plans for the future concerning their new found riches. Harry didn't much care what they did with the money so long as it was amusing. He greatly enjoyed feeling amusement and delight. Being able to laugh freely and gleefully made Harry feel as though he were lighter than the air around him.

Still, getting past the twins was no real challenge when one had the element of surprise. That, and access to an invisibility cloak made fooling the twins easier than it would have been should he lack one or the other. While under his cloak, Harry drew his wand and cast a Stunning Spell at the furthest object away from the tent entrance. That item just so happened to be the vase atop the dining table. Harry smirked as his spell shattered the vase and caused the twins to leap to their guard, but both squawked in fright when they each had pulled out fake wands of their own design instead of their real ones. By the time the two had thrown down their rubber chicken and dog bone, Harry was already sailing across the empty grasses outside with laughter threatening to give away his concealed presence.

Outside the tents were a few parties still in mid-swing under the full moon light. Harry was sure that he spotted Seamus and Dean making grabs at a bottle of liquor when he passed the Irish tents in order to reach the deep end of the nearby forest. Mrs. Finnegan did not look pleased with them, but that might have been because she was sloppily kissing her still very sober husband, who smoothed her wild hair patiently as he held her close. It was rather sweet, and a tad bit unsightly, but Harry was trying hard to suppress the part of him that echoed Xemnas' input on feelings he only mimicked from research into rage and hatred.

"I would have never thought," came a shushed purr from behind him, "that I would find the great master of Nihilism sneaking around in the woods like some common hooligan."

"Make smart remarks all you like, Draco," Harry replied dryly, "but I was actually expecting you to tail me here."

Seeing through darkness was a lesser ability that all Nobodies possessed, but a useful one none the less. Using the power within, Harry felt his eyes pulse minutely as he engaged the ability in order to see Draco. His vision cleared after a beat, leaving Harry to stare into the poker-faced visage of the one and only Malfoy heir. The blonde had an eyebrow arched high, gazing at Harry with a very deadpan expression.

"Do you doubt me after all this time?" Harry asked in a melodramatic tone, even clutching at his chest where he could feel the beat of his heart.

"No, not that…" Draco responded once a moment had paused.

"Then what?" Harry queried, raising an eyebrow of his own.

"What do I call you?" the blonde blurted out meekly, taking a step back after he realized what he had said. This only caused the superior's eyebrow to shoot up higher and for him to frown in thought.

It was a fair question, even with the undertone that came with it. If he was Harry, then Draco would have nothing to fear. This also had the added effect of him being decapitated by the Graceful Assassin within two shakes of a lamb's tail. However, if he was to be called Xemnas, then Marluxia would forever live in distress over his past transgressions and the vengeance that was so rightfully within Harry's claim to take.

So what was he to be called…?

"You can call me Harry Potter when we're around people who don't know about us," Harry answered calmly after a deep breath, but then his eyes flashed cold, and unyielding authority wafted from him to make Draco shiver in pure dread, "However, I am your leader. When we have need of them, we shall call one another by our given names and numbers from within our glorious Organization XIII. And should you even have a fleeting fancy of stirring rebellion once again, I will crush you, Draco Marluxia Malfoy… _personally_."

Even as the bead of cold sweat dropped from the spoiled blond's forehead, he smiled magnanimously at the once formidable leader of the Nobodies. It was quickly becoming obvious that Xemnas had lost almost none of his step. The only thing lost from the man was his ruthlessness and cruelty, and perhaps that was why Draco hadn't yet fled to the deepest regions of the universe never to be seen by his adoring public again.

After all, the Pride Lands was in season this time of year…

Before Harry could make good on his threat with a demonstration, both leader and assassin snapped their attention toward the campsite where something in the air told them things were wrong. The air reverberated with a bad feeling that registered with their hearts.

Yes, something was very wrong indeed…

* * *

Moving back toward the camp, Harry was dimly aware that the noises in the campsite had changed. The singing of intoxicated partygoers had stopped to be replaced with the screams of fretful persons fleeing in every direction. By the light of the few fires that were still burning, he could see people running away into the woods, fleeing something that was moving across the field toward them, something that was emitting odd flashes of light and noises like gunfire. Harry and Draco made themselves intangible as people passed through them in their haste. Loud jeering, roars of laughter, and drunken yells were drifting toward them.

Then came a burst of strong green light, which illuminated the scene.

A crowd of wizards, tightly packed and moving together with wands pointing straight upward, was marching slowly across the field. Harry squinted at them.

They didn't seem to have faces. Then he realized that their heads were hooded and their faces masked. High above them, floating along in midair, four struggling figures were being contorted into grotesque shapes. It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air. Two of the figures were very small. More wizards were joining the marching group, laughing and pointing up at the floating bodies. Tents crumpled and fell as the marching crowd swelled.

Once or twice Draco saw one of the marchers blast a tent out of his way with his wand. Several caught fire, and the screaming was only growing louder. The floating people were suddenly illuminated as they passed over a burning tent and Draco saw that they were the muggles of the area. It appeared that the entire family had been taken hostage. One of the marchers below flipped the wife upside down with his wand; her nightdress fell down to reveal voluminous drawers and she struggled to cover herself up as the crowd below her screeched and hooted with glee.

"How crude," Harry muttered with displeasure, watching as the smallest child was spun like a top sixty feet above the ground with his head flopping limply from side to side.

"What shall we do… superior?" Draco asked, his gaze shifting from the display in front the two in order to focus on the momentary surprise that overcame Harry's face. The address of respect was completely unforeseen. But Harry took it as a positive sign.

"We'll deal with them now," Harry said, gesturing toward the marching crowd with wide open arms. "Let this be our first mark on the journey to completion!"

Draco settled for rolling his eyes while they were still in the shadows of the tree line.

"Robe me, Marluxia," Harry's voice seemed to echo from the trees. Again Draco rolled his eyes as he summoned the Darkness to their aid, using it to retrieve their cloaks from the other side of the twin realms.

Harry felt empowered to once again be uniformed in the hooded black cloak, gloves, and boots of his once dreaded posse of heartless shells. His jeans had already been black, so all he had to do was hide his shirt by zipping his cloak from top toward the bottom, but allowed the bottom half to stay unzipped in order to show his midnight black boots so that his attire could strike fear into the hearts of these accursed fools.

Draco was gladder to have his scythe back in the grip of his darkly gloved hands than for the uniform itself. Flower petals danced around him as his powers came into bloom with the plant life at his beck and call. This was what he had wanted, to use his might to crush those weaker than him. And now Xemnas was presenting him with the chance like a gift on a silver platter.

Life was starting to resemble a fraction of fairness again.

Ministry wizards were dashing from every direction toward the source of the trouble. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was coming ever closer. Harry put his hood up as he saw Hermione and Ginny come out into the open while pulling coats over their nightdresses and Mr. Weasley right behind them. At the same moment, Bill, Charlie, and Percy emerged from the boys' tent, fully dressed, with their sleeves rolled up and their wands out. They were shouting to each other, and after a moment the three eldest Weasley boys sprinted away toward the oncoming marchers. Mr. Weasley was not far behind them either as the man moved faster than Harry ever believed him capable.

Harry waited until Fred and George led Ron and Ginny away from the fray before he erected a barrier around the encampment with the snap of his fingers. Hermione slammed into it hard, falling out as she was stopped from reaching safety by her own best friend.

"Before you ask why," Harry drawled in a mysterious voice, even as he saw Draco openly roll his eyes, "Remember that we have need of her for later."

"I didn't say anything." Draco stated innocently, even while he was thinking of how overly dramatic his leader had to be about the situation. Why couldn't they simply have transformed the Granger girl after this was over, or let the Ministry deal with the peons while they converted her?

But oh well, all great men of power were entitled to their little ways of madness…

"Come," Harry beckoned Draco to follow him out of the shadow of the wood. Draco followed respectfully after his leader, both putting their hoods up in unison in order to remain anonymous.

* * *

Hermione was scared and deeply confused as the shimmering barrier kept her from the safety of the woods and from her friends. The crowd beneath the Roberts family was larger than ever now. Hermione turned around in panic to find another escape route while seeing the Ministry wizards try to get mob to disperse, but they were having great difficulty. It looked as though they were scared to perform any spell that might make the Roberts family fall. The colored lanterns that had lit the path to the stadium had been extinguished. Dark figures were blundering through the trees behind Hermione. She could hear children crying, anxious adults shouting and other panicked voices reverberating through the cold night air.

Just when she thought she might be able to signal someone that she was in turn, Hermione saw two darkly hooded figures move slowly toward the crowds. One moved with the casual grace of taking a nightly stroll through downtown London. The other spun a gleaming scythe around, flower petals coming into existence and falling around the person like dance of nature's beauty.

Hermione watched as the two figures brushed past the busily fretting Ministry wizards, who seemed to be both upset and nervous at their appearance. The unarmed man made a number of grand sweeping gestures with his arms, turning to the wizards as he must have been speaking to them. The working wizards looked incredulous about something, and then a glowing red beam of power sprang forth from the man's sleeve or something and was mere centimeters from the throat of a wizard. Hermione gasped as she thought the man would kill the wizard, but he didn't as he turned back to the drunken crowd of wizards and spoke again, this time loud enough for Hermione to hear.

"Wizards and witches of transgression, hear me well!" the new arrival started, his voice echoing loudly and sounding dramatically, "You will cease this foolishness immediately, or be dealt with by myself and my accomplice. The choice is yours."

Suddenly, the wizards and witches in the mob all erupted into drunken shouts and screams. Hermione didn't understand what was happening anymore, especially when spells began firing, and a series of popping noises announced the arrival of twenty wizards, appearing from thin air, surrounding the crowd. The leading figure of the darkly clad duo weaved through the mob and the Ministry wizards, sprouting yet another red beam sword from his other arm and beating any and every wizard that came across him. The beams knocked aside the wizards easily, but left no slash marks or wounds. Hermione squinted through the dim light, speculating that the red beams were in fact more like police truncheons rather than swords. Hermione observed the cloaked man move like a whisper on the wind, whirling around here and there as he knocked wands from hands, hit wizards in the back, and caused shimmering barriers to stop any spell that was sent at him.

Glancing around, Hermione gasped as she saw the accomplice moving much like his partner, yet with every slash of his pink weapon she could not make out clearly, Hermione saw flowers bloom from where wounds clearly should have bled. The flowers then dispersed, and every wizard hit by either the weapon or the fading flowers found themselves face first on the ground breathing shallowly, but still alive. This second hooded figure moved with the grace of a professional assassin. He weaved through his opponents like the stem of a flower quickly wrapping through a tree, and made short work of them with minimal effort. It was as if all his movements were planned in steps, and his opposition was obviously caught off-guard by quick footedness and odd fighting style. From her knowledge, very few wizards had any martial training outside of wizard dueling, so when the man's weapon caught their spells like rocks against a shield, they were understandably shocked into astonishment that someone owned something so magic restraint.

The last she checked, for Harry's sake, the last magically-resistant item ever bought and sold was a cup of some kind by a wealthy woman who claimed it a lost family heirloom.

"You're rather distracted," Hermione's eyes widened as she fought herself in the shadow of the black cloaked man from earlier. The only reason his shadow fell on her was because of the crimson beam that he held aloft as though considering whether or not to strike her down next. His voice was empty of all tone, something which Hermione had never encountered before. Like the man shut off all his emotions and thoughts to make his voice so bland and detached. "You should know better."

Hermione whirled around on the spot, and without pausing to think she threw herself onto the ground just as the red energy club breezed over her when the man had obviously aimed for her ribs.

"STUPEFY!" she pointed her wand at him, and the man deflected the spell back at her. Hermione felt the hair on her head ripple as though a powerful wind had swept past her. Her body seized up, and she was as stiff as a board when her senses jarred out of her control for a moment. Hitting the ground even more completely than before, Hermione spent an eternity within several seconds thanking the Queen's grace that her stunning spells weren't up to par with someone like Harry or a more fully-trained wizard, who would have rendered her completely unconscious. Hermione lay there on the ground, groaning faintly until she regained proper motion in her neck. Raising her head a fraction of an inch she saw jets of scarlet light and heard shouts of charms and curses flying over her from the Ministry wizards as the cloaked figures gathered at her spot and stood their ground over her. They deflected spells here and there, some causing the ground to uproot while others had the effect of turning tree leaves into field mice. Hermione heard the second shadowy man whisper something to the person who acted as his superior from their interaction, and the leader gave a single nod before kneeling down and gently hoisting Hermione into his arms with surprising strength. She felt almost weightless in his arms, and if she had full control over her stiff neck and limp arms, she would have torn off his hood to reveal his face. Instead, all she could do was peer into the shadowy hood that concealed his eyes and nose from her view, then make her eyes widen in object horror as an inky black portal opened up behind the man and his accomplice.

* * *

"Authorize emergency action, sir!" one of the wizards shouted as he fired another purple blast of magic at the enigma pair, "They've taken a hostage and invoked the Darkest of Arts by summoning the bleakness itself!"

"Magic like this hasn't been seen in over three hundred years…" a witch gasped as her eyes bulged and her wand lowered in sheer shock and awe.

"Emergency action approved!" a rough looking wizard yelled as he and several others next to him trained their wands on the pair.

"Which code, sir? Which one?"

"The same as in the first war fourteen years ago." The man said, and drew a circle in the air with his wand. The circle was shortly followed by an orange glow that began to burn like the flames of the sun. The other wizards soon followed, but the two cloaked figures were already inching back into the oozing archway of midnight. Hermione felt her skin crawl as she first made contact with the literal personification of darkness, and it was not a good feeling. Her spirit felt stretched as if being pulled deeper into the gloom, and she wanted nothing more than to scream herself hoarse at being kidnapped into the depths of darkness by these two evil wizards.

"Stop!" yelled a voice Hermione recognized, "STOP! That girl could be killed!" the voice was cold, curt voice. It was Mr. Crouch. Turning her head a little from out of her captor's grasp, Hermione saw Mr. Crouch tearing his way through the crowd of now detained drunk witches and wizards while his own stately dressed Ministry officials were at his back and on his heels. The cloaked man's arms tensed around Hermione, and she could tell he felt a mild sense of apprehension at having to face the more rigid wizard.

"I could end this," her other captor had a grin in his tone while he turned his weapon toward the light created by the moon and nearby torches.

Hermione's eyes widened. It was a scythe. A pink scythe!

The same exact scythe that Malfoy had tried to threaten Harry with!

So that meant-!?

"No," the cold voice inside the raised hood which held her prisoner breathed that word with all the warmth of a glacier, "that won't be necessary. We're not here to fight a full scale war against these wizards…" he leant forward with his words this time, adding a dramatic flair to his presence as the light caught his face at just the right angle for Hermione to see within its depths. Her eyes widened again as shock hit her with all the force of the Hogwarts Express.

This cold unfeeling person that was taking her into the darkness of Hell itself was Harry! Her friend! The person she trusted most besides her own parents!

His glasses missing, Hermione caught sight of just how deep his emerald eyes could be. And just how frigid as well. His expression was a manic grin, as though he entertained the thought of going toe to toe against some the Ministry's best wizards on the very field they stood like it would be nothing more than a simple schoolyard tussle. His eyes were glimmering and cold to her sight. Like all the warmth and emotion had been drained from Harry on purpose as he stared straight ahead into Mr. Crouch's face, which was taut with rage.

"… not yet at least. Tempting though it is…" he slid back even further into the darkness, and Hermione felt as though the inky blackness around her was slowly crawling along her skin like a cloud of ants that did not bite, but instead seeped into her body slowly like ocean waters, "We have more important matters at hand."

Harry looked down at Hermione, and she knew without him telling her that he was purposely showing her his face for some reason. Her friend's odd behavior came flooding back to her mind, and she again desired to scream for help. Not for herself this time, but for Harry. What had become of him? What did Malfoy or some other agent of evil done to her Harry? Could it be reversed? Would she ever get her best friend back?

And just as important, was Ron and the others safe in all of this? Would they be next in whatever evil controlled Harry? And was it controlling Malfoy too?

"Like getting my ever faithful Saix back into the fold, first and foremost." Harry purred with a trace of evil Hermione wished she had never heard.

So many questions raced through Hermione's mind as her lungs suddenly felt compressed. She wanted answers to all of them, even as she heard Mr. Crouch call for Harry and Malfoy to return from sinking back completely into the darkness. Even as she was sent whirling in Harry's arms through the void of evil, she never stopped thinking of what was happening, nor of ways to save her friend and possibly Malfoy from the grip of evil.

She would save them! She had to!

She had to…

* * *

Mr. Crouch was furious. He wracked his brain a mile a minute, running the present situation this way and that for what he had just seen. "Who was that?" he snapped, his sharp eyes darting between the wizards from the other nations Ministries and his own department's men. "Which of you saw just who the bloody hell those two men were?!"

"We didn't see who they were, sir!" one man said, gesturing toward where the portal of darkness was dissipating, "They had their hoods on the entire time. The girl was also indistinguishable with all this damnable Muggle clothing! She could have just been a Muggle girl with wizard relatives."

"We couldn't even hit them with our spells." another of the wizards added into, rubbing his elbow and looking up to his commander, "All our magic just bounced off them strange weapons. Even the transfiguration spells!"

"DAMN!" Crouch shouted, his wand still out and pointing directly at where the two men had disappeared into the archway of evil with that girl. His eyes were popping, giving him the look of a man touched by madness. "I want the identity of that girl discovered. This whole place is to be swept by Diagnosis spells and Revealing charms! And I want our Investigation unit working for as long as it takes!"

"They're already making their way here, sir!" a witch in a long woolen dressing gown said while she tended to the fallen wizards who had been struck down by the two darkly dressed men.

"And find out who erected that damn barrier on the north end!" one of the men in Crouch's party snapped, "It took us ten minutes to break through it! It had none of the normal attributes of a protective spell. Get some of them on that job, too."

"Someone contact the Aurors!" Crouch turned his popping eyes on his men now, displeasure etched all over his face.

"Was that a real doorway into hell, sir?" the witch in the woolen dressing gown asked, but Crouch sighed deeply and shook his head.

"I think not." The man directly behind Crouch answered instead. He lit up a cigarette, taking a slow drag of it before exhaling the smoke in a savored manner. "That kind of magic leaves an ill omen and chill in the air. Like a foul fog that takes days to get the stench from your nose. My guess is that it was some punk foreigners that found some ancient weapons and made some new design of Apparation in their country. That portal was in no way wafting evil like I've seen in rituals gone wrong. It was a fake, but a decent one at that."

"You seem very well informed about how the doors to darkness are crafted, Smithers—"

"Don't give me a headache over it, Barty." The man, Smithers, sighed after another long drag of his cigarette, "You know I've worked a long time at this."

But Crouch seemed to think he knew better on the subject than Smithers. He raised his wand to where the dark portal had been and started sending off sparks while muttering incantations to himself. None of his spells seemed to take the effect he wanted, however, as he grumbled in frustration and turned on heel to stalk out of the camp grounds.

"Whatever that thing was, it doesn't leave a signature I can fish out from the magic used by it." Crouch muttered, shaking his head.

"I'll have my men look into it," Smithers said, but Crouch whipped on him and scowled so sharply that the edges of his mouth could have cut glass.

"No! I don't want anyone from _your_ department stepping foot here, Smithers! None!" Crouch shook his fist at the other man, who sighed while the cigarette hung limp from his mouth.

"Whatever you say, you ol' bull-shark." Smithers shrugged his shoulders and moved to help coordinate the effort to collect all the unconscious wizards littering the grounds. Crouch took another stressful sigh before he and the witch in the dressing gown did the same.

This mystery would be solved, and that poor girl saved! They had to for her sake!


	6. The Draught of Misconceptions

**If you have any suggestions for this story, then please feel free to leave them in a Review or a direct PM to me. Here's hoping you're enjoying the story!**

 **Chapter 6: The Draught of Misconceptions**

* * *

Hermione smirked to herself as she strolled respectfully behind her leader down the corridors of the Castle That Never Was.

Her Lord and Master.

The be all and end all to the once proud Organization XIII which would again rise from its ashes to the majesty of its former glory in imitation of the mighty phoenix.

Hermione was absolutely beaming, and could swear there was a slight skip to herself. Beside her, Draco made a disgusted face to plainly convey his gross displeasure with the situation. Whether his disgust was aimed at her for returning to the mortal realm, or at their leader for summoning her back from that accursed Limbo, Hermione could not be sure. Maybe it was a mixture of both. Yes, that seemed all the more probable.

Where once the young girl entering womanhood had walked with slow steps and a measured pace, Hermione found that she simply could not control her jubilation at being half-whole once more in the world of the living. Her stride was more confident now than it had ever been with her gloved fingers absently touching the spine of the thick tome she held at her right side. The wide beaming smile must have looked crazed on her face, but Hermione did not care. She was back to life!

Zexion was back to life!

Draco made another disgusted snort as he turned his nose up at her while glaring from the corner of his eye. Let him glare all he wants, she thought gleefully, nothing aside from utter obliteration at the hands of their leader could remove her from the Cloud Nine she was currently perched upon. Nothing!

And their home! Hearts above, did she miss the palace for all of Nobody kind! It was grand! It was majestic! It was simply magnificent! Words in all the languages of this universe called World could not properly describe how much she had longed to return to this place, or just how amazing it was to once again walk its hallowed halls with Xemnas leading her path.

And as it was, she knew that life was better now. She knew this because life would never again be the same since she was awakened from what was meant to be an eternal slumber. But as her great leader would say, "Nothingness is eternal!"

And since he ruled over all of the in-between, she would forever be with him…

The more Harry used his powers over the Nothing, the easier it was to call up his strength little by little. Hermione witnessed it when in a moment she had been panicked by the presence of Xemnas before being overcome with a sense of profound loyalty toward him. All immediately proceeded by remembering who she was and being shocked to discover _he_ was now a _she_ in the first place.

However, she digressed…

Harry, as he wanted to be called while they were casual in interactions, was growing toward his former strength. Hermione could feel his power growing through the connection their hearts formed through ties of Nothingness. And she knew almost without pretense that the more of their former party they revived, the stronger Harry would become.

But their castle! Oh hearts, their castle! Having a magical fortress outside of Ministry control which was also inaccessible by anyone aside from Nobodies meant they were untraceable in any magic they practiced while in the castle, and also gave them the upper hand against their peers.

Because honestly, she was still Hermione Granger after all. She just now had her Zexion part back.

And the best part so far was that Xemnas was actually nice! As Harry Potter he smiled more and made a lot less of those ridiculous speeches, but he also cared about them now and wasn't unreasonable with them, mostly making sure they simply didn't spill the beans as they traveled through the Corridor of Darkness back to the others where he and Draco created some story of the three of them hiding out in the Malfoy family tent. Lucius Malfoy had been present, and didn't look too happy by the obvious fib, yet he acted accordingly when Harry smiled in front the Minister and thanked him and his family for giving them safe haven.

Their glorious leader strikes again!

By the time any of the wizards around them even thought to question them further about their experience, Harry had already supplanted their inquisitive nature by making the comment that Hermione's fallback nature of quiet introspection — as she was as Zexion — was a factor of the ordeal they had faced before hiding in the Malfoy tent. Apparently she had been kidnapped by the two roguish cloaked men and barely escaped with Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy aiding her runaway with the arsenal of any spell, charm, hex, and curse that they knew as the three ran for their lives.

Her and Draco's disheveled appearances didn't do anything to disprove their full-blown deceit, yet had the added benefit of acting as silent evidence to all of Harry's claims.

* * *

Hermione hid her smirk inside the book she was currently, and slowly, morphing into a part of her soon to come collect of lexicons which would restore her lost Library of Vengeance. Her favorite novel, the Book of Retribution, was lying in wait for her to summon back from the eternal gloom of the darkness they traveled through.

"I want to talk about something important with you two," Harry's voice ended their quiet as he walked into Draco's bedroom within the Malfoy family tent. Draco sat up, annoyed, from where he was toying with the petals of a flower within an elegant vase.

"What now, oh great leader?" the blond groaned resentfully, already tired of Harry's constant breathing down his neck with every little thing.

"Is there a problem, Marluxia?" Harry asked, his eyes sliding over to where the blond was huffing.

"Other than not being twenty feet from you since I've arrived to this bloody place…" Draco mumbled to himself. Harry chose to ignore him for the moment. Instead he would just get straight to the point.

"Our next objective will be to turn my dear best friend Ron into Xigbar as soon as possible." Harry revealed, and as soon as the name of Number Two left his mouth, Draco threw his arms in the air.

"Fantastic! Just great!" Draco snapped, glaring at his resurrected leader with all of his hate. "Yet another lackey for you to have in my face!"

"What in the name of Kingdom Hearts are you on about, Malfoy?" Harry inquired, his eyebrow cocked while Hermione was gaping at the blond's open aggravation.

"Just admit it! You want me on a leash!" Draco accused, pointing a finger at Harry's face. "Ever since your failed attempt to turn me into Saix, it's been on your mind this entire time! And since you keep failing at it, you're just moving on to the old fool to keep me in your all-knowing sight."

"Marluxia, you should rethink—" Hermione started, but Draco wanted to hear nothing out of her mouth. When she was Zexion she had been a hindrance to his plans, and as Granger she was a bigger thorn in his side.

"Shut your face, you bushy bookworm you!" he snapped back at the stoic schemer. Then he turned his sights back on to the master of all things annoying. "I want to get it all out in the open now! You want me gone!"

"Me? Want you gone!?" Harry laughed, sharp and cold. He felt the blood pounding in his ears. If he were any other person, the amount of rage he felt right then would have been enough to blow his top. But he was not any other boy. He was Harry Potter. He was Xemnas. He was commander of that great emptiness between the Light and the Dark.

And remembering all of this made Harry's face instantly morph into a deep scowl.

"It was not I who chose _betrayal_. It was not I who led members to their _death_ in Castle Oblivion." And then Harry started to really feel that angry as it simmered like a boiling pot below the surface of his calm. It was like his blood had suddenly been lit on fire. " _You_ did that! You and Larxene! Plotting your deceit! Planning to overthrow our organization!" Harry's eyes narrowed in on Draco, and the cold around the blond assassin grew chilling. " _My_ organization."

"You gave me no choice! I would have never obtained respect under your foot with those fools! All you cared about was Kingdom Hearts! I had to do something to get what I deserved!" Draco roared, and everything froze in the world. The air stilled. The night went deadly silent. Every inch of the bedroom remained as motionless as possible as Harry whipped back as though struck physically by Draco's words.

" _YOU ACCURSED FOOL_!" Harry's voice cracked the air like a strike of thunder, powerful enough to send Draco staggering back and frightful enough to make Hermione shelter herself behind the nearest object. "I trusted you. I gave you Castle Oblivion!"

"You gifted me my grave!" Draco spat back, but did not dare to get within range of where Harry could summon his Ethereal Blades to do some damage.

"I gave you an opportunity to show initiative! To prove that you were worthy of responsibility!" Harry pinned Draco with the heat of his glare, "But all you proved was your potential to backstab."

"That's rich coming from the man who sent Axel in to kill us all." Draco sneered at Harry, who looked crossed between confused and angry.

"I sent Axel to report back to me on Sora's business in the castle and to find the Chamber of Waking, not to eliminate _traitors_." Harry flickered his gaze over to where Hermione was still slightly behind the table, "Zexion was loyal beyond question, as well as Vexen and Lexaeus. If I wanted traitors put down, I would have sent Xigbar or Xaldin."

"Don't play me for a fool!" Draco raged, flowers growing and wilting at his feet while his anger soared. "You sent Axel to eliminate us! I knew it from the second I saw Axel meeting with Saix right before he was assigned to Castle Oblivion!"

"Saix…?" Harry appeared completely caught off guard by the mention of Saix having anything to do with their current argument. He had trusted Saix to handle the day to day reports of Oblivion's on-goings and to act accordingly. Truthfully he knew Saix was a little heavy-handed with justice, but…

"You say Axel eliminated you all. I was under the impression that Sora and Riku had systemically made their ways through the castle and dealt you one by one." Harry was not looking at Draco. Instead, his gaze was focused on Hermione. Zexion would never lie to him, not when they were face to face like this.

Hermione came out from behind the table fully, brushing off her jeans as she stood proud, reporting to her superior. "Yes, Axel was the one who disposed of me. I cannot say what happened to Marluxia or Larxene as they were the two conspiring for control of the Organization. However, Axel did eliminate myself and Vexen on orders from Saix."

Harry held a stony expression for a long time until he eventually put his face in his hands and groaned. His beautiful Organization XIII, destroyed from the inside thanks to petty infighting and misguided ambitions. He wasn't sure which was worst: being defeated by a rag-tag group of dim-witted Light-siders, or breaking down because everyone was too self-absorbed to come together when they had needed to most of all.

"Ugh… Kingdom Hearts… strike me down down…" he groaned aloud as he sat back down on the bed near him.

So Marluxia had only turned traitor when he thought they were conspiring to get rid of him. And Saix had gotten rid of Marluxia because the pink-haired assassin and Larxene had been about growing too big for their share of soil. And where did Axel fall into all of this?

Vexen? Zexion? Lexaeus? Naimie?

Nonetheless, Harry had to collect himself. He liked his life as Harry Potter, and all this headache only reminded him that he was a different person than before. Xemnas would have done away with all of them if it meant he could access Kingdom Hearts. Harry was not like that. He wanted them all back, because somewhere deep inside Xemnas, the man had held the notion of the organization being like a family. All of them, even Marluxia and Larxene.

"I… I apologize, Marluxia," Harry said, choosing his words precisely, "I should have paid more attention to what was occurring right under my nose. Your death was _well deserved_ , but unnecessary."

Draco looked as if he was about to tell Harry where he could shove his apologizes, but then must have thought better of it because he simply nodded and kept his mouth sealed shut. An apology from the Lord of Twilight was nothing to sniff at as it was as rare as a purple moon in a green sky. Draco had yet to see such a sight, but with Xemas making apologizes all of a sudden, he was not entirely certain purple moons and green skies were impossible anymore.

"Superior," Hermione spoke up, very unsure of where they all stood now, "are we still moving forward with turning Ron into Xigbar?"

"I honestly don't know, Hermione," Harry ran a hand down his face, suddenly feeling tired and drained, "Maybe we should hold off on it, maybe not. I'll think about it."

"You should do it sooner rather than later," Draco said, sighing before he held his head high. It would not do well to show how much a simple apology touched him. He had believed he would be nothing more than a slave under the scrutiny of Xemnas and the others, but Harry was not fully Xemnas. He wasn't fully Harry either, but that wasn't the point. If he watched his step, and didn't do anything foolish…

Draco smirked despite how much he wanted to keep the expression off his face. If he played his cars right—no pun toward Luxord there—then he had a chance this time around to claim more respect and power within the group. He had been summoned first, not Saix or even Xigbar.

Yes, life was definitely starting to resemble fairness.

* * *

"Harry!" yelled a voice Harry instantly recognized. "HARRY! HERMIONE! Where the devil are you?" Harry pushed himself off the bed and stood as he, Hermione, and Draco saw Mr. Weasley striding toward them, looking terrified with Lucius Malfoy and Barty Crouch right at his heels. "Dear Merlin, you two—" his voice sounded shaky. He flung himself from the doorway and onto their collective shoulders, holding them tight and shaking with barely contained sobs that Harry could feel on his neck. "I thought — we thought — thank Merlin himself you children are all safe."

Mr. Weasley released them from his deathly tight hug, but still gripped their shoulders as he held them at arm's length, giving all three of them a good once over with his eyes. "Nearly had a heart-attack myself when the Minister came to tell me what went on… I'm so glad you two— three are okay. Draco, thank you for helping them and keeping them safe." Mr. Weasley looked back at Lucius, who despite himself was not scowl or making disgusted faces this time as Mr. Weasley held back tears in his eyes, "Lucius, thank you for giving them shelter. There are no words that can express how grateful I am to you and your family. Harry and Hermione are like my own children. Thank you."

"It was," Lucius began in a drawl, but then smiled lightly in sincerity as he saw Mr. Weasley was truly grateful, "It was nothing. Think nothing of it at all, Arthur. I'm sure you would have done the same for my son and wife."

Mr. Weasley nodded, and shook hands with Lucius before bringing him in for an overly familiar hug. Lucius grimaced through it, but put up no fight. Harry could practically see the wheels turning in the Malfoy patriarch's head. The blond man was thinking about how to turn all of this in his favor for later.

"You've got to see them safe, now out of the way, Arthur," a cold, curt voice said as Mr. Crouch moved forward. It was only then that Harry noticed the team of other Ministry wizards behind the man, closing in on them. Mr. Crouch's face was taut with significance and urgency.

"Did any of you get a look at the men who took your friend?" Mr. Crouch snapped off as soon as Mr. Weasley moved an inch out of his path. Mr. Crouch's sharp eyes darting between the three of them.

"N-No, I didn't," Hermione stuttered out, not having to fake feeling small under Mr. Crouch's beady eyes. He reminded her too much of Ansem the Wise whenever he questioned about experiments being done behind his back. "It all happened so fast! One minute, I was being carried through this murky dark walkway, and the next I was yanked free with Draco pulling me and Harry shooting jets of light. The black robed men ran after us, but Draco made a snake appear and Harry made it grow. They had trouble with that."

"One was holding a farming tool," Draco supplied, looking appropriately as if he were trying to be helpful. "I don't know much about farm tools, mind you, but this one was easy to spot because Death uses it."

"A scythe." Mr. Crouch nodded, taking this information as accurate since his men had reported as much.

"Yes," Draco nodded, enjoying the twist of lies and deceit that rolled off him. These fools were being played as expertly as Demyx's sitar, "It was some shade of pink. He was swinging it every which way, cutting the snake I made to pieces. The other man, him holding some glowing red billyclubs, yelled at us. I think he was making an overly dramatic and needlessly pointless speech — Ow!"

Harry had subtly stomped Draco's foot.

"Anyway," Harry continued, throwing Draco a quick glare, "The guy with red batons, he was obviously the leader. After cursing us, he told the other guy something. It sounded like he was saying to head back to port… If that makes any sense."

"Port, you say?" Mr. Crouch still had his wand out from earlier that evening, and his eyes were popping — he looked slightly mad. "If you have any information that could be vital to us catching the last of these miscreants —"

"Barty, lay off!" a witch in a long woolen dressing gown shouted, "They're kids, Barty, and I for one think they've been through enough."

Harry took that opportunity to make his face express ever so slightly that he was brave and headstrong enough to continue, but he was still shaken from what happened. "Like I said, Mr. Crouch, it sounded to me like he said to return to port. I'm not entirely sure it was what he said, but after he said it, they disappeared back into their black archway."

"Did they do anything to you, dear?" the witch in the dressing gown asked Hermione, her tone gentle as Hermione shook her head.

"No… I suppose they didn't have the chance…" Hermione answered back quietly, her expression suggesting that the thought had never occurred to her, but was now all she could picture. Her face was growing more horrified and pale by the second. Mr. Crouch turned his popping eyes on Hermione now, disbelief etched all over his face. But none of the Ministry wizards apart from Mr. Crouch seemed to think it remotely likely that Harry, Draco, or Hermione had anything more they could give without being subjected to more fright than their experience had already caused; on the contrary, at Hermione's words, they had begun to file out of the Malfoy family tent and were pointedly discussing ideas about which port the black robed men could be trying to use for their escape.

"Mr. Crouch," Lucius drawled as he stepped forward. The only adults that remained with the three teenagers now were himself, Mr. Crouch, and Mr. Weasley, "If you send a team now to the nearest ports, you may yet capture these scoundrels. As we all know, magic does not work out at sea."

"Or we might still be too late," the witch in the woolen dressing gown said, shaking her head. "They'll have Disapparated by now. It's what our boys in Diagnostics think the archways are really for; just a terribly frightening way to Disapparate."

"And then there's the business of the masked wizards who attacked the Muggles, Barty," Mr. Weasley reminded his colleague, and finally Mr. Crouch gave up trying to pierce Harry and Hermione's skulls with his stare alone.

"You're all clean." Mr. Crouch said, sounding highly disbelieving. Then turned on heel and marched out of the tent with the witch right behind him after she gave Hermione a few quick words of comfort.

"Come on, Harry, Hermione," Mr. Weasley said, gesturing for them to follow him.

But when they reached the flap of the tent, their progress was impeded. A large crowd of frightened-looking witches and wizards was congregated there, and when they saw Mr. Weasley coming toward them, many of them surged forward.

"What's going on?"

"Who were those men with weapons?"

"Arthur — it's not — _His people_ , is it?"

"Of course it's not His band," Mr. Weasley snapped impatiently. "We don't know who it was; it looks like they Disapparated. Now excuse me, please, I want to get to Harry Potter and this young lady to bed. And I could use with some shut eye myself." He raised his head, and his voice as he shouted out, "As could all of you! Everyone back to their tents! The situation is fully under control!"

Without another word or care, Mr. Weasley led Harry and Hermione through the crowd and back toward their campsite.

* * *

All was quiet now; there was no sign of the masked wizards, though several ruined tents were still smoking. Charlie's head was poking out of the boys' tent.

"Dad, what's going on?" he called through the dark. "Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny got back okay, but Harry and Hermione—"

"I've got them here with me," Mr. Weasley interrupted, bending down and entering the tent. Harry and Hermione entered after him. Bill was sitting at the small kitchen table, holding a bedsheet to his arm, which was bleeding profusely. Charlie had a large rip in his shirt, and Percy was sporting a bloody nose. Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny looked unhurt, though shaken.

"Did you get them, Dad?" Bill inquired sharply. "The person who caught Hermione in all this?"

"No," Mr. Weasley gave a heavy sigh.

"What about the Mark, then?" Percy asked nasally, tissue to his nose.

"We found Barty Crouch's elf holding a man's wand. The man being Stan Stunpike, a helper and conductor of the Knight Bus. He swears up and down his mother's grave that he had nothing to do with the Mark being over the woods, but Barty and Amos are holding him for questioning about the Mark and the strange men…"

"But we're none the wiser about who actually conjured the Mark." Bill figured, and Charlie and Percy looked shocked.

"What?" the two brothers echoed each other.

"Stan is in trouble?" Charlie asked, having gone through school with him.

"Mr. Crouch's elf?" Percy sounded thunderstruck. With some assistance from Harry and Hermione, Mr. Weasley explained what had happened in the woods. When they had finished their story, Ron had leapt out of his chair and hugged his two best friends for all he was worth. Fred and George looked like they wanted to do the same, and so did Ginny.

"Look, can someone just explain what that skull thing was?" Ginny asked impatiently, hugging herself. "It wasn't hurting anyone, so why was it such a big deal?"

"I told you, it's You-Know-Who's symbol, Gin," Ron said as he turned to his baby sister. Just the mention of Voldemort had the youngest of the Weasley holding herself all the tighter before anyone else could react. "Hermione read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts."

"And it hasn't been seen for thirteen years," Mr. Weasley admitted quietly. "Of course people panicked… it was almost like seeing You-Know-Who back again. He and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed. The terror it inspired… you have no idea, you're too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house, and knowing what you're about to find inside…"

Even Harry and Hermione gave a genuine wince at that. They were all for beating the idiots of the Wizarding World senseless, but to kill people and brag about it with a giant floating smoke signal was a brand of cruelness all its own.

"It was then… and for some, even _now_ , everyone's worst fear… the very worst…"

There was silence for a moment. Then Bill, removing the sheet from his arm to check on his cut, said, "Well, it didn't help us tonight, whoever conjured it. It scared most of the Death Eaters away the moment they saw it. The ones who were still conscious and uncaptured Disapparated away before we'd got near enough to unmask any of them."

"Thankfully the Aurors caught the Robertses before they hit the ground. They're having their memories modified right now."

"You mentioned Death Eaters," Harry echoed, "What are Death Eaters?"

"It's what You-Know-Who's supporters called themselves," Bill explained. "I think we saw what's left of them tonight — the ones who managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban, anyway."

"We can't prove it was them, Bill… Though it probably was," Mr. Weasley said, his head hung hopelessly.

"Yeah, I bet it was!" Ron said suddenly. "And the ones who took Hermione were probably in league with those nutters in masks!"

"But didn't the black robed men fight the Death Eaters? Why would Voldemort's supporters—" Harry began. Everyone flinched, as like most of the wizarding world, the Weasleys always avoided saying Voldemort's name. "—be up to fighting each other? And why were they levitating Muggles in the first place if they were out to kill? I mean, what was the point?"

"The point?" Mr. Weasley gave a hollow laugh. "Harry, that's their idea of fun. Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for sport. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn't resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them," he finished, clearly disgusted.

"And the black robed men were most likely in league with their stupider Death Eater friends." Percy surmised with a shake of his head, "Probably tried to clear them out before they gave away some kind of grand scheme or something. The better Death Eaters know when and where to act. The two who took Hermione were probably within the inner circle of You-Know-Who's following."

"But if they were the Death Eaters, why did they Disapparate when they saw the Dark Mark?" Ron asked, his eyes narrowing in thought. "They'd have been pleased to see it, wouldn't they?"

"Not necessarily, Ron," Bill said with a hand out. "Use your brain, little brother. If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power, and told all sorts of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people. I bet they'd be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied they'd ever been involved with him when he lost his powers, and went back to their daily lives… I don't reckon he'd be too pleased with them, do you? The two who took Hermione were probably some of his most loyal coming out of hiding." Bill's eyes flickered up at Hermione, "Most likely in an attempt at a dark ritual to bring him back, or something…"

"S-So… whoever conjured the Dark Mark…" Hermione said slowly, losing a bit of color at the train of thought Bill had put into her imagination, "were they doing it to show support for the Death Eaters, or to scare them away?"

"Your guess is as good as ours, Hermione," Mr. Weasley shrugged, looking infinitely tired "But I'll tell you this… it was only the Death Eaters who ever knew how to conjure it. I'd be very surprised if the person who tried to take you had anything to do with the mark being in the sky. And even more if the person who did it hadn't been a Death Eater once, even if they're not now… Listen, it's very late, and if your mother hears what's happened she'll be worried sick. We'll get a few more hours sleep and then try and get an early Portkey out of here."

Harry got back into his bunk with his head buzzing. He knew he ought to feel exhausted: It was nearly three in the morning, but he felt wide-awake — wide-awake, and ecstatic. Three days ago — it felt like much longer, but it had only been three days — he had awoken with his scar burning and discovered his past life as Xemnas. And tonight, he had succeeded in bringing back Marluxia and Zexion all before Voldemort's mark had appeared in the sky.

Harry lay looking up at the canvas, but no flying fantasies came to him now to ease him to sleep, and it was a long time after Charlie's snores filled the tent that Harry finally dozed off with thought on how to isolate Ron and turn him _intentionally_ into Xigbar.

* * *

 **If you have any suggestions for this story, then please feel free to leave them in a Review or a direct PM to me. Here's hoping you're enjoying the story!**

 **-Traban16**


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